A  SHORT  OUTLINE 
OF  THE  HISTORY 

of  the 

FAR  EASTERN 
REPUBLIC 


Published  by 

The   Special   Delegation   of   the   Far   Eastern   Republic 
to  the  United  States  of  America, 

Washington,  D.  C. 
1922 


>» 


A  SHORT  OUTLINE 
OF  THE  HISTORY 

of  the 

FAR  EASTERN 
REPUBLIC 


Published  by 

The   Special  Delegation  of  the   Far   Eastern   Republic 
to  the  United  States  of  America, 

Washington,  D.  C. 
1922 


vs 

Sit, 7 
P37 


"LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 

SANTA  BARBARA 


A  Short  Outline  of  the   History  of  the 
Far  Eastern  Republic. 


CONTENTS 

Page 

INTRODUCTION    7 

Purpose  of  this  outline.  The  political  situation  in  the  Far 
East  at  the  time  of  Kolchak's  downfall  in  Siberia.  The 
popular  movement  against  the  reactionary  government. 
Forms  of  the  movement.  The  origins  of  the  idea  of  a 
democratic  government  in  the  Russian  Far  East. 

CHAPTER  I.— FROM  THE  OVERTHROW  OF  THE 
REACTIONARY  GOVERNMENT  TO  THE  JAP- 
ANESE ATTACK  OF  APRIL  4-5 9 

Creation  of  a  democratic  government  in  the  Maritime 
Province.  The  revolution  in  the  Amur  region;  Ata- 
man Kalmykov's  expulsion  from  Khabarovsk.  The  first 
negotiations  for  the  purpose  of  uniting  the  various  re- 
gions. Japanese  military  authorities  and  the  revolution. 
Japanese  evacuation  of  the  Amur  region  and  its  suspi- 
cious character.  The  note  of  the  government  of  the 
Maritime  Province  to  Japan  concerning  a  speedier  evac- 
uation by  the  Japanese  troops.  The  Nikolayevsk  events. 
The  overthrow  of  Semenov's  power  in  Western  Trans- 
baikalia and  the  formation  of  the  Government  of  Ver- 
khne-Udinsk.  Declaration  of  the  Conference  of  Verkhne- 
Udinsk  of  April  6,  concerning  the  formation  of  the  Far 
Eastern  Republic.  The  significance  of  this  declaration. 
The  recognition  of  the  Far  Eastern  Republic  by  Soviet 
Russia. 

CHAPTER  II.— FROM  THE  JAPANESE  ATTACK 
ON  APRIL  4-5  TO  THE  CONCLUSION  OF  A 
GENERAL  ARMISTICE  AT  THE  STATION  OF 
GONGOTTA    16 

Japanese  attack  against  Russian  troops  and  civilians  in 
the  Maritime  Province  on  April  4-5.    Murder,  violence 


and  plundering.  The  object  of  the  attacks  and  the  results 
achieved.  The  agreement  of  April  29  concerning  dis- 
armament. The  struggle  in  the  Amur  region.  Convoca- 
tion of  the  National  Assembly  of  the  Maritime  Province 
and  the  rallying  of  the  population  against  the  Japanese 
peril.  Declaration  issued  by  General  Oi  on  May  1.  Ar- 
mistice on  the  Khabarovsk  front.  The  Amur  region  rec- 
ognizes the  declaration  of  April  6  and  the  Government 
of  Verkhne-Udinsk.  The  various  regions  begin  to  unite. 
Preliminary  negotiations  of  the  Verkhne-Udinsk  Govern- 
ment with  the  Japanese  at  Gongotta  and  their  failure. 
Work  of  unity  impeded  by  the  Japanese.  Killing  of  the 
truce-bearers,  Utkin  and  Grazhensky.  Japanese  military 
pressure  against  the  authorities  of  the  Amur  region  in 
consequence  of  their  recognition  of  the  Government  of 
Verkhne-Udinsk.  Japanese  preparations  for  an  attack 
against  the  Amur  region.  Sending  of  delegations  to 
Vladivostok  to  negotiate  about  unitv.  The  general  politi- 
cal situation  favorable  to  unity.  The  declaration  of  the 
Japanese  Government,  of  July  3,  as  to  evacuation  of 
Transbaikalia  and  the  temporary  occupation  of  Sakhalin 
and  the  Nikolayevsk  district. 

CHAPTER  III.— FROM  THE  GONGOTTA  ARMIS- 
TICE TO  THE  CHITA  UNITY  CONFERENCE  OF 
THE  REGIONAL  GOVERNMENTS 22 

Agreement  of  July  15,  between  the  Japanese  and  the 
Verkhne-Udinsk  Governments  concerning  an  armistice 
on  all  fronts.  Semenov  calls  a  National  Assemblv  in 
Chita.  The  population  of  Sretensk  and  Nerchinsk  drives 
out  Semenov's  troops  and  recognizes  the  Verkhne-Udinsk 
Government.  Preliminary  conference  of  three  regions 
in  Verkhne-Udinsk.  Japanese  attempts  to  force  the  rec- 
ognition of  Semenov  as  the  legal  authority  in  Transbai- 
kalia. Semenov  leads  away  his  main  forces  to  Dauren 
and  prepares  his  attacks  against  the  democratic  institu- 
tions. The  Japanese  military  command  is  compelled  to 
mitigate  the  aggressiveness  of  its  policy  and  evacuates 
Khabarovsk  and  the  whole  district.  Semenov  driven  out 
of  Chita.  Defeat  of  his  army  at  Borsa  Daura.  Seme- 
nov's men  driven  out  of  Transbaikalia. 

CHAPTER  IV.— FROM  THE  UNITY  CONFERENCE 
TO  THE  CONCLUSION  OF  THE  WORK  OF  THE 
CONSTITUENT  ASSEMBLY   25 

The  Chita  Unity  Conference  of  all  regional  governments 
and  its  results.  Dangers  and  threats  hampering  the  work 
of  unity.    Japanese  help  to  Semenov's  army  on  its  retreat 


to  Manchuria  and  its  transfer  to  the  Maritime  Province. 
Ungern's  departure  to  Mongolia.  Recognition  of  the 
Unity  Conference  by  the  National  Assembly  of  the  Mari- 
time Province  and  Japanese  threats.  The  Grodekovo  in- 
cident. Seizure  of  fisheries  by  the  Japanese.  Elections 
to  and  convocation  of  the  Constituent  Assembly.  Adop- 
tion of  the  declaration  and  the  communications  to  the  va- 
rious governments.  Fundamental  laws.  Election  of  the 
Government  and  termination  of  the  work  of  the  As- 
sembly. 

CHAPTER  V.— FROM  THE  CONCLUSION  OF  THE 
WORK  OF  THE  CONSTITUENT  ASSEMBLY  TO 
THE  NEGOTIATIONS  AT  DAIREN 31 

Japanese  support  to  the  Semenov-Kappel  forces  in  the 
Maritime  Province.  Participation  in  the  preparation  of 
a  reactionary  coup  d'etat.  Seizure  of  power  by  the  reac- 
tionaries at  Vladivostok  and  Nikolsk-Ussurisk  and  the 
part  played  therein  by  the  Japanese  military  command. 
Plan  of  a  general  attack  against  the  Far  Eastern  Republic 
by  all  reactionary  forces  for  the  purpose  of  crushing  the 
democratic  regime.  Failure  of  the  reactionaries  in  the 
Maritime  and  the  Amur  regions.  Ungern's  defeat.  Prac- 
tical work  for  the  enforcement  of  the  constitution  after 
the  close  of  the  Constituent  Assembly.  Formation  of  the 
Cabinet.  Activity  of  the  Government  and  of  the  Council 
of  Ministers.  Regional  Popular  Assemblies.  The  reac- 
tionary government  in  the  Maritime  Province.  The  in- 
dignation of  the  population  of  the  seized  region,  and 
Merkulov's  policy  of  bloody  repression.  Negotiations  at 
Dairen. 

APPENDIX— DOCUMENTS   39 


INTRODUCTION 

The  history  of  the  Far  Eastern  Republic  is  the  history  of  the 
struggle  of  the  population  of  the  Russian  Far  East  for  its  indepen- 
dence, the  history  of  two  years  of  incessant  effort  to  unite — in 
spite  of  the  obstacles  placed  by  the  militarists  of  a  neighboring 
country  and  by  their  own  reactionaries — the  various  separated 
and  disconnected  regions  and  to  form  a  new  state  founded  on  the 
basis  of  a  true  democracy  and  popular  rule. 

Official  documents  prove  beyond  any  doubt  that  the  entire  popu- 
lation of  the  country  has  asserted  its  firm  determination  to  attain 
this  aim. 

They  also  bear  testimony  to  the  obstacles  which  the  population  con- 
tinually had  to  overcome  in  this  endeavor. 

The  purpose  of  this  outline  is  to  establish  the  inner  connection  be- 
tween these  documents;  to  relate  briefly  the  fundamental  features 
of  the  struggle  of  the  population  of  the  Far  East  for  a  democratic 
republic. 

In  order  to  elucidate  in  detail  the  conditions  under  which  there 
originated  the  idea  of  the  formation  of  an  independent  democratic 
state  in  the  Russian  Far  East,  it  is  necessary  to  dwell  on  the  poli- 
tical situation  in  which  the  Far  Eastern  regions  found  themselves 
at  the  moment  of  the  final  downfall  of  the  reactionary  government 
of  Admiral  Kolchak  in  Western  and  Eastern  Siberia,  i.e.,  in  Feb- 
ruary of  1920. 

The  representatives  and  agents  of  that  government  in  the  Far 
East — General  Rozanov  in  Vladivostok,  Ataman*  Semenov  in  Trans- 
baikalia, Kalmykov  in  Khabarovsk  and  so  on — employing  like  every- 
where else  in  Siberia  a  system  of  incredible  despotism  and  cruel  re- 
pressions, violating  all  civil  liberties  and  popular  rights — brought 
upon  their  heads  in  this  part  of  the  country  and  at  the  indicated 
time  a  general  upheaval  and  revolt  of  numerous  partisan  bands. 

It  will  be  sufficient  to  call  attention  to  some  individual  facts  such 
as  the  murder  and  robbery  committed  by  Ataman  Kalmykov  in 
Khabarovsk  on  a  number  of  persons,  among  whom  were  several 
foreign  subjects,  such  as  Dr.  Hedeblum,  representative  of  the  Swed- 
ish Red  Cross;  the  strangling,  in  Chita,  by  Ataman  Semenov,  of 
Bogdanov,  the  Chairman  of  the  Board  of  the  Zemstvo;  the  establish- 
ment by  his  fellow  henchmen  Ungern  and  others  of  torture  cham- 
bers at  the  stations  of  the  Transbaikal  Railway  in  Makkaveyevo  and 


♦Cossack  chieftain. 


Dauren,  where  they  robbed,  tortured  to  death  and  murdered  not  only 
several  thousand  champions  of  the  revolution  but  also  a  number  of 
members  of  the  Kolchak  government. 

The  whole  borderland  was  submerged  in  blood  by  those  crimi- 
nal agents  of  reaction. 

It  is  easy  to  understand  why  such  a  regime  aroused  against  itself 
even  the  moderately  minded  democratic  zemstvos  and  the  autono- 
mous municipal  administrations  which  joined  hands  with  the  "par- 
tisan" movement,  and  that  in  the  partisan  detachments  began  to 
take  part  not  only  the  workers  and  the  "middle"  peasants,  but  also 
the  wealthiest  peasants,  owners  of  big  land  tracts. 

To  this  attitude  contributed  still  more  the  behavior  of  the  inter- 
ventionist troops,  mainly  the  Japanese,  which  were  helping  the  re- 
actionaries, and  like  them  did  not  hesitate  at  perpetrating  the  worst 
outrages  on  the  peaceful  population. 

As  a  characteristic  example  of  their  attitude  we  may  mention 
the  fact  confirmed  in  the  official  report  of  the  Japanese  General 
Staff,  concerning  the  burning,  in  March,  1919,  by  Japanese  soldiers, 
of  Ivanovka,  the  largest  and  richest  settlement  in  the  Amur  region. 
In  this  case,  for  alleged  support  given  to  the  Bolsheviks,  196  house- 
holders were  completely  ruined  and  232  peaceful  inhabitants  were 
killed,  among  them  a  great  number  of  the  wealthiest  farmers.  A 
great  number  of  women  and  children  perished  when  the  Japanese  set 
the  houses  on  fire,  as  the  soldiers  were  shooting  at  the  persons  who 
tried  to  escape  from  the  burning  dwellings. 

Eighty-six  houses  and  more  than  200  other  buidlings  were  de- 
stroyed by  the  flames,  as  well  as  large  quantities  of  grain,  agricul- 
tural machinery  and  other  property  valued  at  several  hundred 
thousand  dollars;  the  destroyed  agricultural  machinery  alone 
being  estimated  at  more  than  $100,000. 

This  event  stirred  up  the  peasant  population  of  the  whole  region 
and  imprinted  itself  deeply  in  the  memory  of  the  people. 

As  a  result  of  all  these  facts  the  revolutionary  movement  spread 
all  over  the  Far  East,  and  took  the  form  mainly  of  partisan  war- 
fare against  the  government  of  Kolchak  and  the  interventionists. 
This  warfare  was  entirely  conducted  by  the  whole  peasant  popula- 
tion of  three  regions  of  the  border-land,  which  was  disgusted  with 
the  reactionary  goverment  and  with  foreign  intervention. 

This  movement  was  joined  in  the  cities  by  the  labor  organizations 
and  democratic  bodies,  by  the  zemstvos  and  the  autonomous  mun- 
icipal authorities.  The  partisan  movement,  having  brought  about 
the  isolation  of  the  reactionary  goverment  by  confining  it  to  the 
large  cities,  was  at  this  period  one  of  the  factors  which  contributed 
to  the  further  isolation  of  the  different  regions  of  the  country  from 
each    other. 

At  the  period  in  question,  i.e.,  in  the  beginning  of  1920,  there  were 
two  main   regions   in   which  the  popular   revolutionary  movement 

8 


against  the  goverment  of  Kolchak  was  asserting  itself  — the  Amur 
and  the  Maritime  Province. 

But  at  the  same  time  the  conditions  of  the  devolopment  of  the 
movement   were  not   quite   identical   in  both  provinces. 

The  difference  was  rooted  in  the  peculiarities  of  the  intervention 
in  each  of  the  two  provinces,  in  the  relations  between  the  popular 
movement  on  the  one  hand  of  the  troops  of  the  various  intervening 
countries  on  the  other  hand.  In  the  Amur  region  there  were  at 
that  time  exclusively  Japanese  military  forces.  As  was  already 
mentioned  above,  they  were  in  every  respect  adding  the  reactionaries 
in  subduing  the  movement,  not  only  not  lagging  behind  them,  but 
even  surpassing  them  in  the  cruelty  with  which  they  were  treat- 
ing the  local  population.  It  is  natural  that  the  revolutionary  pop- 
ulation on  the  Amur,  expecting  no  help  from  anywhere  against 
these  atrocities,  became  accustomed  to  the  thought  that  only  unity 
with  all  the  remaining  Russian  population  waging  war  against  re- 
action, that  only  union  with  kindred  Soviet  Russia  will  assure  the 
success  of  their  efforts  to  free  themselves  from  their  native  and 
foreign  oppressors. 

In  the  Maritime  Province  there  were  in  addition  to  the  Japanese 
also   troops   of    other   allied   countries. 

The  Americans  and  partly  the  Czecho- Slovaks,  in  their  behavior 
and  their  attitude  towards  the  population  and  its  struggle  for  lib- 
erty at  that  period  were  prompted  mainly  by  the  principle  of  non-in- 
terference into  the  internal  affairs  of  the  Russian  people,  as  was 
stated  by  the  governments  at  the  beginning  of  their  intervention. 

Moreover,  through  their  mere  presence  they  retained  the  Jap- 
anese when  they  were  showing  too  obviously  their  intention  to  vio- 
late these  principles,  by  openly  supporting  the  reactionary  govern- 
ment in  its  struggle  against  the  popular  movement.  Owing  to  this 
state  of  affairs  the  elements  with  revolutionary  and  democratic  in- 
clinations in  the  Maritime  Province  came  to  the  conclusion  that  suc- 
cessful results  in  their  struggle  against  the  reaction arv  and  oppres- 
sive rule  of  General  Rozanov,  a  henchman  of  the  Kolchak  govern- 
ment, they  could  fully  obtain  only  if  they  would  secure  the  sym- 
pathies and  friendship  of  at  least  some  of  the  allied  countries. 

Obviously  such  an  attitude  was  possible  only  on  condition  that  the 
movement  and  its  aims  take  on  a  democratic  character  and  recognize 
the  principles  of  democratic  government  in  the  Far  East. 

Thus  was  originated  and  strengthened  in  the  Far  East  the  idea 
of  its  organization  into  an  independent  democratic  state,  founded  on 
the  recognition  of  civil  liberties. 

CHAPTER  I. 

It  is  natural  that  these  democratic  principles  were  laid  down  as 

a  basis  for  building  up  the  new  life  after  the  downfall  of  General 

Rozanov's  rule,  and  the  power  was  given  over  by  the  victorious 

people  to  the  Board  of  the  Zemstvo  of  the  Maritime  Province  which 

9 


was  the  organ  of  the  local  autonomous  administration,  the  repre- 
sentatives of  all  political  parties  and  organizations  of  citizens  being 
invited  to  participation  in  the  government. 

The  new  power  immediaetly  proclaimed  the  introduction  of  demo- 
cratic principles  in  the  Maritime  Province,  and  entered  upon  the 
road  of  a  further  struggle  for  uniting  with  the  other  regions  of  the 
Far  East  on  the  basis  of  democracy. 

The  decrepit  reactionary  government  whose  agents  in  the  Mari- 
time Province  have  disgraced  themselves  by  openly  trying  to  be- 
tray their  people  and  by  their  agreement  with  the  foreign  military 
commanders  to  disarm  the  Russian  army  and  to  hand  over  almost 
the  entire  Far  East  to  Japan,  finally  crumbled  down,  having  lost 
the  confidence  even  of  its  own  troops,  and  having  been  compelled  to 
surrender  one  city  after  another. 

On  January  30,  1920,  an  upheaval  took  place  in  Vladivostok.  On 
February  4,  the  Kolchak  regime  fell  in  the  Amur  region,  and  the 
regional  administration  passed  into  the  hands  of  the  Executive  Com- 
mittee that  was  at  the  head  of  the  revolutionary  movement. 

On  February  12,  Ataman  Kalmykov,  pressed  by  the  popular  revo- 
lutionary troops  of  the  Maritime  Province,  fled  from  Khabarovsk, 
burning  entire  peasant  villages  and  Cossack  settlements  on  his  way. 
hanging  and  shooting  his  own  subordinates  who  did  not  want  to 
follow  him,  and  finally  taking  refuge  on  Chinese  territory  where  he 
was  disarmed. 

On  February  15,  1920,  Khabarovsk  was  already  occupied  by  revo- 
lutionary troops  and  a  revolutionary  autonomous  administration  was 
established  there. 

Thus  in  the  beginning  of  March  already  the  entire  Far  East  up 
to  the  borders  of  Transbaikalia,  where  Semenov,  with  the  help 
of  the  Japanese,  was  still  holding  out  by  means  of  an  unheard  of 
reign  of  terror,  was  already  liberated  from  the  rule  of  the  agents 
of  Kolchak's  government. 

In  all  liberated  localities  order  was  gradually  being  established 
and  regional  as  well  as  autonomous  municipal  administrations  were 
organized. 

And  everywhere  the  principles  of  democratic  government  and  the 
recognition  of  the  rights  of  the  people  were  laid  down  as  the  basis 
of  the  framework  of  the  new  government. 

And  at  the  same  time,  the  regional  authorities,  after  shaking  off 
the  old  reactionary  rule  immediately  set  to  the  task  of  uniting  the 
country  into  one  political  entity. 

Already  in  March,  1920,  there  began  negotiations  between  the 
Amour  region  and  the  Maritime  Province  concerning  the  creation  of 
a  single  government  for  the  whole  liberated  Far  East. 

But  there  appeared  obstacles  standing  in  the  way  of  this  union 

10 


and  of  the  democratic  form  of  government — obstacles  which  were 
not  only  and  not  so  much  due  to  the  forces  of  internal  reaction,  as 
to  the  policy  of  the  military  command  of  the  Japanese  expeditionary 
forces  which  from  the  very  first  days  of  the  democratic  revolu- 
tion endeavored  to  hamper  its  progress  and  to  prevent  the  union  of 
the  regions  of  the  Russian  Far  East  that  were  separated  from  each 
other  by  the  reaction.  In  order  to  illustrate  the  position  taken  by 
the  Japanese  military  authorities  it  is  necessary  to  mention  here  a 
characteristic  episode  which  took  place  in  Vladivostok  in  the  first 
month  of  the  revolution.  At  the  moment  when  the  revolutionary 
troops  had  already  seized  the  city  and  had  surrounded  the  last  ref- 
uge of  the  old  government,  viz.,  General  Rozanov's  house,  where 
he  fortified  himself  with  the  last  remainders  of  his  adherents,  the  de- 
tachment of  the  popular  revolutionary  army  that  had  received  the 
order  to  take  that  house,  all  of  a  sudden  found  itself  face  to  face 
with  a  detachment  of  Japanese  troops.  The  officer  of  that  detach- 
ment declared  that  he  would  not  allow  the  popular  revolutionary 
army  to  enter  that  house  and  that  he  would  order  his  soldiers  to 
open  fire  as  soon  as  such  an  attempt  would  be  made. 

The  revolutionary  troops  were  ins-tructed  to  avoid  absolutely  any 
clashes  with  the  foreign  troops,  but  in  any  case  to  attain  the  object 
upon  which  depended  the  success  of  the  revolution,  even  if  it  were 
necessary  to  employ  force  for  that  purpose. 

And  it  seemed  as  if  from  both  sides  the  firing  would  start  any 
second,  which,  had  it  happened,  would  have  changed  the  course  of 
events  in  many  respects,  as  was  the  case  at  the  time  of  the  revolt 
of  General  Gaida,  in  the  fall  of  1919,  when  the  Japanese  helped 
Rozanov  to  crush  the  revolt. 

But  at  the  critical  moment  there  appeared  on  the  spot  an  Ameri- 
can detachment,  the  commander  of  which  declared  to  the  Japanese 
that  if  they  would  interfere  in  favor  of  Rozanov,  the  Americans,  in 
turn,  would  also  be  compelled  to  break  the  neutrality. 

The  Japanese  detachment  retired,  and  the  revolutionary  troops 
could  occupy  the  last  fortified  position  of  the  revolutionary  power. 
This  episode  was  already  a  significant  foreboding  of  what  the  at- 
titude of  the  Japanese  military  command  would  be  toward  the  vic- 
torious revolution. 

The  same  thing  was  to  be  expected  in  other  places  as  well.  Thus, 
according  to  the  admission  of  General  Yamada,  the  commander  of 
the  Japanese  troops  in  Khabarovsk,  the  bridge  before  Khabarovsk 
was  destroyed  upon  his  orders,  for  the  purpose  of  staying  the  at- 
tack of  the  popular-revolutionary  forces  against  Ataman  Kalmy- 
kov.  In  Blagovyeshchensk,  in  the  Amur  region,  after  a  revolution- 
ary administration  had  been  formed  in  the  city,  the  Japanese  mili- 
tary command  drew  up  the  soldiers  in  battle  array,  placed  the  can- 
nons on  the  heights  surrounding  the  city  and  began  to  serve  upon 
the  new  administration  all  kinds  of  ultimatums  and  demands  whicl 
thev  knew  could  not  be  fulfilled. 

11 


Only  the  powerful  rise  of  revolutionary  enthusiasm  which  united 
the  whole  population  of  the  city  and  the  district  in  readiness  to 
defend  the  conquered  freedom  with  all  their  power,  as  well  as  an  im- 
portant number  of  resolutions  adopted  by  all  civil  organizations, 
including  even  the  moderately  liberal  Society  of  Physicians  and  the 
Association  of  Gold  Operators,  and  the  threatening  attitude  of  the 
peasantry  in  the  entire  region,  forced  the  Japanese  military  command 
to  the  recognition  of  the  fact  that  it  was  impossible  to  crush  the 
popular  movement  there,  as  at  the  given  moment  it  was  not  in  a 
position  to  concentrate  larger  forces  in  that  region. 

Thereupon  the  Japanese  declared  that  they  were  friendly  toward 
the  Russian  people  and  that  the  Japanese  troops  wer  going  to  leave 
the  region  of  Amur. 

The  triumph  of  the  Amur  population,  however,  was  soon  marred 
by  the  behavior  of  the  Japanese  at  the  time  of  the  evacuation.  Their 
attitude  was  extremely  provocative;  they  plundered  the  quarters 
which  they  gave  up,  and  in  spite  of  the  protests  of  the  local  authori- 
ties carried  away  valuable  railroad  equipment.  Stranger  still  was 
the  character  of  the  evacuation  itself. 

The  Japanese  troops  were  evacuated  from  the  Amur  region,  not 
in  order  to  return  to  Jauan,  as  they  had  stated  in  their  declaration, 
but  were  sent,  instead,  in  three  different  directions;  part  of  them 
went  westward  to  Transbaikalia,  part  eastward  to  Khabarovsk,  and 
the  artillery  detachment  was  simply  transferred  to  the  other  bank 
of  the  Amur  River,  on  Chinese  territory. 

All  this  spelled  rather  sinister  foreboding,  as  the  evacuated  re- 
gion was  now  threatened  with  an  attack  from  three  sides.  The 
same  defiant  character  marked  also  the  attitude  of  the  Japanese  in 
the  Maritime  Province,  where  they  did  not  show  the  slightest  in- 
tention of  ending  the  intervention,  although  with  the  evacuation  of 
the  Czecho- Slovaks  all  the  pretexts  therefor  were  already  exhausted 
and  the  troops  of  the  other  allies  were  already  getting  ready  to  leave 
the  Russian  Far  East. 

The  Japanese  officers  insulted  the  Russian  civil  population  and 
soldiers,  they  arrested  and  beat  up  without  any  reason  Russian  citi- 
zens, and  committed  all  kinds  of  outrages. 

At  that  time  the  Japanese  military  authorities  openly  supported 
Semenov's  rule,  which  was  the  only  obstacle  in  the  way  of  unity  of 
the  entire  Far  East  on  the  basis  of  the  principles  of  democratic 
government. 

Their  troops  crushed  there  all  the  efforts  of  the  local  population 
to  shake  off  the  hated  rule  of  the  Ataman,  preventing  the  already 
liberated  population  of  the  neighboring  places  from  helping  their 
fellow  countrymen. 

In  consideration  of  such  an  attitude  of  the  Japanese  troops,  the 
Board  of  the  Zemstvo  of  the  Maritime  Province  which  was  the  re- 
gional government  of  that  province,  believing  that  the  continuation 

12 


of  the  intervention  was  the  only  obstacle  preventing  the  unification  of 
the  country  and  its  organization  on  the  basis  of  a  democratic  govern- 
ment, addressed,  on  March  20,  1920,  a  note  to  the  Japanese  Govern- 
ment, in  which  it  insisted  upon  the  necessity  of  an  immediate  with- 
drawal of  the  Japanese  troops. 

The  note  pointed  out  that  all  formal  grounds  for  an  intervention 
had  been  removed ;  it  showed  how  the  policy  of  the  Japanese  govern- 
ment was  in  striking  contradiction  to  this  fact,  as,  far  from  evacu- 
ating its  troops,  it  even  increased  their  number  in  the  Far  East ;  the 
note  also  called  attention  to  the  fact  that  the  Japanese  were  actively 
supporting  the  reactionary  elements,  and  solemnly  declared  that  any 
further  independent  interventionist  activity  by  Japan,  will  be  con- 
sidered by  the  Maritime  Government  as  a  violation  of  its  sovereign 
rights  in  the  Far  East.  The  answer  was  a  landing  of  new  Japanese 
divisions  in  Vladivostok. 

An  entirely  isolated  episode  which  was  not  connected  with  the 
general  course  of  events,  was  the  incident  in  Nikolayevsk  on  the 
Amur  which  occurred  at  the  same  time.  The  events  of  which  the 
Japanese  Government  later  on  took  advantage  in  order  to  justify 
the  intervention  and  for  the  purpose  of  seizing  Sakhalin  and  the 
district  of  Nikolayevsk,  were  mainly  brought  about  by  the  state  of 
isolation  from  the  other  centers  of  the  Far  East,  owing  partly  to 
Japanese  efforts  to  prevent  that  district  entering  into  communica- 
tion with  the  other  regions.  Already  in  February,  1920,  the  whole 
district,  swept  by  the  partisan  movement,  had  freed  itself  from  the 
rule  of  Kolchak's  creatures.  In  a  daring  attack  the  partisans  then 
took  the  fortress  of  Chnyrakh,  which  was  near  the  city,  was  pro- 
vided with  heavy  cannon  and  was  garrisoned  by  Japanese  and  re- 
actionaries. 

After  the  occupation  of  the  fortress  the  partisans  twice  sent  truce 
bearers  to  the  city,  asking  the  reactionaries  to  give  up  their  adminis- 
tration and  to  disarm  their  detachments. 

In  both  cases  the  truce  bearers  were  bestially  tortured  to  death 
by  the  Japanese  and  the  Kolchakists. 

Only  after  the  threat  was  expressed  that  the  city  would  be  bom- 
barded from  the  fortress  was  an  agreement  concluded  according  to 
which  the  administration  was  to  pass  into  the  hands  of  the  Revolu- 
tionary Staff,  the  Kolchak  soldiers  to  be  disarmed,  and  the  Japan- 
ese to  remain  neutral. 

The  Japanese  troops  solemnly  promised  to  abide  by  the  terms  of 
the  agreement  and  during  the  first  days  endeavored  by  all  means  to 
obtain  the  confidence  of  the  partisans. 

Several  days  afterwards,  late  at  night,  without  any  cause  or 
warning,  the  Janpanese  and  the  reactionaries  who  were  armed  by 
them,  attacked  the  partisans  in  their  sleep;  they  opened  machine 
gun  and  cannon  fire  against  their  barracks  and  put  the  torch  to  the 
staff  headquarters,  from  which  the  chief  of  the  staff  and  his  sub- 

13 


ordinates  barely  escaped,  he  and  many  of  his  companions  being 
wounded. 

In  the  mean  time  the  partisans  recovering  from  the  first  surprise 
began  to  repulse  the  attackers. 

Then  the  Japanese  armed  all  their  residents,  gathered  in  the 
house  of  the  Consulate,  and  in  spite  of  the  terms  offered  them  for 
their  surrender  continued  to  fight  fiercely. 

On  their  part,  the  embittered  partisans,  concentrated  a  strong  fire 
against  the  house  from  which  bullets  were  flying,  and  in  a  desperate 
struggle  almost  all  the  Japanese  perished,  except  a  small  band  that 
surrendered. 

The  senselessness  of  this  treacherous  attack  of  a  small  detach- 
ment which  the  Japanese  military  command  had  left  behind  with- 
out strengthening  it  at  the  proper  time,  impels  the  thought  that 
either  the  Japanese  military  authorities  expected  too  much  from  the 
suddenness  of  the  attack,  or  that  this  mad  attack  was  part  of  the 
higher  policy  of  the  Japanese  supreme  military  command. 

Later  on,  after  large  military  forces  had  occupied  Sakhalin  and 
the  mouth  of  the  Amur  River,  and  were  approaching  Nikolayevsk, 
the  partisans  left  the  city. 

Knowing  from  experience  that  the  Japanese  would  take  atrocious 
revenge  for  their  defeat  in  the  month  of  March,  and  having  received 
information  that  they  had  already  begun  their  bloody  repressions 
against  the  inhabitants  of  the  villages  occupied  by  them,  the  par- 
tisans, prompted  by  revenge  and  losing  their  self-control,  executed 
a  few  scores  of  Japanese  prisoners  whom  they  had  taken  in  March. 

This  action,  like  other  atrocities  occurring  in  civil  war,  can,  of 
course,  not  be  justified. 

But  the  activities  of  the  Japanese  authorities,  in  the  whole  Nik- 
olayevsk incident,  are  the  immediate  cause  of  all  that  followed. 

At  any  event,  the  Nikolayevsk  incident  turned  out  to  be  such  a 
convenient  excuse  in  the  hands  of  the  Japanese  military  command, 
for  the  justification  of  its  whole  aggressive  policy,  for  intensifying 
the  intervention  and  for  seizure  of  the  most  important  regions  of 
the  Russian  Far  East  that  one  cannot  refrain  from  thinking  that  if 
that  incident  had  not  happened,  the  Japanese  militarists  would  have 
had  to  bring  it  about. 

Thus  were  events  taking  their  course  in  the  Far  East. 

In  the  meantime,  in  the  western  part  of  the  country,  the  pop- 
ulation of  Western  Transbaikalia,  unable  to  endure  any  longer  the 
madness  and  the  lawlessness  of  Ataman  Semenov,  rose  like  one 
man,  and  at  the  end  of  March,  1920,  shook  off  his  rule  in  the  region 
of  Verkhne-Udinsk  in  the  Pribaikal  district. 

Here,  in  Verkhne-Udinsk,  was  then  organized  the  democratic 
administration  of  Pribaikalia  formed  by  the  autonomous  Zemstvo 
organizations  and  the  representatives  of  the  socialist  and  democratic 
organizations.     This  administration  also  made  it  its  task  to  bring 

14 


about  democratic  institutions  in  the  entire  territory  of  Transbaikalia. 

But  the  further  spread  of  the  democratic  administration  and 
the  liberation  of  the  remaining  part  of  Transbaikalia  from  the  re- 
actionary rule  of  the  Ataman  met  with  obstacles  also  on  the  part  of 
Japanese  military  intervention. 

The  Japanese  armed  forces  actively  went  to  the  support  of  Ata- 
man Semenov,  thus  preventing  the  realization  of  the  popular  desire 
to  unite  the  whole  country  and  to  establish  a  democratic  or  ler  all 
over  the  whole  territory  of  the  Far  East. 

The  similarity  of  conditions  in  the  West  brought  about  the  same 
political  development  as  in  the  Maritime  Province. 

The  necessity  to  create  an  independent  democratic  state  out  of  all 
the  regions  of  the  Far  East,  securing  the  realization  of  the  people's 
hopes  in  the  struggle  with  the  last  survivals  of  reaction,  had,  here 
to,  possessed  the  consciousness  of  the  population.  Accordingly,  the 
regional  conference  of  the  representatives  of  the  population  which 
gathered  in  Verkhne-Udinsk,  proclaimed  on  April  6,  the  creation  of 
an  independent  republic  including  Trasbaikalia,  the  Amur  region, 
the  Maritime  Province  and  Sakhalin,  with  a  democratic  government 
and  all  civil  liberties. 

Subsequently  the  conference  formed  a  provisional  government 
which  was  entrusted  with  the  task  of  uniting  all  the  regions  into  one 
republic  and  of  appealing  to  all  nations,  through  their  governments, 
inviting  them  to  establish  friendly  relations,  the  foreigners  being 
guaranteed  full  inviolability  of  person  and  property. 

The  declaration  of  April  6  played  the  central  and  the  determining 
part  in  the  subsequent  struggle  for  unity  of  the  Russian  population  of 
the  Far  East,  serving  as  a  basis  for  all  subsequent  effort  aiming  at 
the  creation  of  a  democratic  state  organization. 

The  whole  subsequent  history  of  the  Far  Eastern  Republic  is  the 
realization  of  the  ideas  expressed  in  the  declaration  of  the  Verkhne- 
Udinsk  conference,  the  history  of  the  most  persistent  efforts,  of  the 
greatest  sacrifices  made  by  the  inhabitants  of  all  regions  to  fulfill  the 
principles  of  this  declaration. 

The  proclamation  of  the  independence  of  the  Far  Eastern  Republic 
was  never  conceived  by  the  population  of  these  regions  as  the  break- 
ing of  the  national  bonds  uniting  it  with  the  remainder  of  the  Rus- 
sian people. 

On  the  contrary,  all  the  aspirations  of  the  population  of  the  Far 
East  and  all  the  acts  referring  to  the  creation  of  the  republic  are 
penetrated  with  the  consciousness  of  the  necessity  of  preserving 
close  relations  with  the  kindred  Soviet  Republic,  from  which  the  Far 
Eastern  territory  was  separated  only  because  of  particular  objective 
conditions  of  international  character,  and  by  its  isolation  from  the 
mother  country.  This  objective  necessity  to  form  an  independent 
democratic  republic  was  immediatly  recognized  by  the  goverment 
of  Soviet  Russia.    The  new  Russia  of  the  people  realized  the  pec- 

15 


uliarities  of  the  situation,  she  understood  the  aspirations  of  the  Rus- 
sian population  of  the  Far  East,  and — we  must  state  right  here, 
even  if  we  have  to  anticipate  a  little  the  course  of  events — that 
in  reply  to  the  declaration  of  independence  of  April  6,  she  sent, 
on  May  14,  a  note  signed  by  the  People's  Commissar  Chicherin,  in 
the  name  of  the  Russian  Socialist  Federated  Soviet  Republic,  recog- 
nizing the  Far  Eastern  Republic  and  its  provisional  goverment. 

CHAPTER  II. 

From  the  very  beginning  when  there  were  laid  the  foundations  of 
the  unity  and  the  democratic  state  organization  of  the  Far  East, 
this  idea  of  a  democratic  organization  had  to  undergo  very  serious 
trials,  and  the  population  of  the  Far  Eastern  Republic  had  to 
bring  many  sacrifices  before  it  could  carry  into  effect  the  principles 
of  the  declaration. 

The  text  of  the  declaration  of  April  6  was  not  signed  yet  in 
Verkhne-Udinsk,  when  the  sound  of  Japanese  cannons  was  already 
heard  in  the  East. 

In  the  face  of  the  contemplated  organization  of  a  united  demo- 
cratic state  the  Japanese  military  command  of  the  expeditionary 
forces  not  only  did  not  show  any  intentions  of  meeting  the  popular 
aspirations,  but  on  the  contrary,  its  reply  to  the  notification  of  the 
government  of  the  Maritime  Province  of  March  2,  concerning  the 
speeding  up  of  the  evacuation — consisted  in  the  dispatching  of  new 
Japanese  divisions  to  the  Maritime  Province. 

The  increasingly  defiant  and  suspicious  attitude  of  the  Japanese 
was  shown  by  a  great  number  of  incidents  insulting  to  Russian  sov- 
ereign rights,  as  well  as  by  demands  incompatible  with  the  national 
dignity  of  the  Russian  people,  which  were  made  by  the  military  au- 
thorities upon  the  government  of  the  Maritime  Province. 

In  the  first  days  of  April  the  Japanese  command  began  negotiat- 
ions with  the  representatives  of  the  Maritime  government  with 
reference  to  these  demands. 

And  in  the  night  of  April  4  and  5,  interrupting  these  negotiations, 
the  Japanese  troops,  without  any  reason  or  warning,  upon  the  orders 
of  the  Supreme  Command  of  the  Expeditionary  Forces,  attacked 
the  Russian  troops  and  the  peaceful  population,  almost  simultane- 
iusly  in  Vladivostok,  Nikolsk-Usurisk,  Khabarovsk  and  along  the 
entire   Usuri    railroad. 

This  sudden  attack  had  the  effect  of  a  bloody  slaughter  and  was  ac- 
companied by  an  artillery  and  machine  gun  bombardment  not  only  of 
the  troops  and  the  barracks,  but  also  of  the  civilian  population  and 
their  dwellings,  by  arson  and  massacre  of  all  those  who  in  the  first 
moment  happened  to  fall  into  the  hands  of  the  Japanese  soldiers. 

In  Vladivostok  a  Japanese  battleship  took  part  in  the  bombard- 
ment of  the  city ;  government  structures  were  fired  at  and  the  build- 

16 


ings  of  the  Board  of  Zemstvo  of  the  Maritime  Province  were  half 
destroyed. 

The  Japanese  troops  showed  especial  fury  in  Khabarovsk  and  in 
some  small  stations  of  the  Usuri  railroad,  in  Okeanska,  Sedanka 
etc.,  where  there  were  no  representatives  of  other  foreign  govern- 
ments. Khabarovsk  was  completely  devastated,  being  for  two  days 
bombarded  by  heavy  cannon.  Machine  guns  were  trained  upon 
the  population  which  on  account  of  the  impending  holidays  was  going 
to  the  market,  including  a  great  number  of  women,  school-children, 
babies. 

Then  the  Japanese  soldiers  went  from  house  to  house,  robbing, 
raping,  and  killing  everybody  whom  they  met  wearing  a  Russian 
military  uniform.  In  the  same  way  they  ran  amuck  on  the  railroad 
stations,  killing  Russian  soldiers  and  all  those  whom  they  suspected 
of  being  sympathizers  of  the  revolution;  scores  of  those  whom 
they  captured  they  drowned  in  the  sea  into  which,  also,  they  threw 
the  bodies  of  those  whom  they  had  killed  with  their  bayonets.  Incre- 
dible acts  of  violence,  insults  and  brutalities  were  committed  on  Rus- 
sian soldiers  and  plain  citizens  who  fell  into  the  hands  of  the  Japan- 
ese soldiers. 

Thousands  of  Russians  who  had  been  taken  prisoner  were  thrown 
into  the  dark,  damp,  underground  prisons  where,  in  some  places, 
thev  were  kept  up  to  July. 

In  order  to  justify  this  treacherous  attack  the  Japanese  military 
authorities  put  into  circulation  a  report  that  in  several  places  in 
Vladivostok,  Russian  soldiers  had  attacked  the  Japanese  army,  which 
was  not  at  all  the  case. 

The  obvious  improbability  of  this  report  becomes  clear  if  only 
from  the  fact  that  everywhere,  from  Vladivostok  to  Khabarovsk, 
the  Japanese  almost  simultaneously  opened  fire  against  the  Rus- 
sians from  cannons  and  machine  guns  that  had  beforehand  been  pre- 
pared for  this  purpose.  And  this  is  with  still  greater  clearness  es- 
tablished by  the  following  fact,  which  is  confirmed  by  documents: 
As  early  as  24  hours  before  April  4  the  Japanese  local  authorities 
posted  up  in  small  stations  and  mailed  to  the  Russian  garrisons  their 
demand  to  surrender  their  arms  immediately,  threatening  to  bom- 
bard them  in  the  case  of  refusal. 

The  Russian  popular  revolutionary  forces  had  already  previous- 
ly received  orders  from  their  government  that  in  the  case  of  a  Japan- 
ese attack,  in  consideration  of  the  inequality  of  the  forces,  thev 
should  not  offer  anv  resistance.  Thus  it  can  be  easily  understood 
that  an  attack  on  their  part  against  the  Japanese  army  was  out  of 
the  question. 

The  result  of  the  Japanese  attack  of  April  4-5  was  the  disarm- 
in?  or  removal  of  the  Russian  armed  forces  from  the  railroad  zone 
and  from  the  cities  of  the  Maritime  Province. 

The  Japanese  availed  themselves  also  of  this  opportunity  to  re- 

17 


move  all  those  who  seemed  to  them  to  be  most  dangerous. 

Laze  and  Lutzky,  members  of  the  Military  Council  who  had  been 
arrested  by  them,  were  not  liberated.  The  Japanese  authorities, 
which  first  concealed  them,  subsequently  delivered  them  into  the 
hands  of  the  reactionary  bands,  and  the  best  defenders  of  the 
people's  independence  and  of  its  rights  were  thrown  into  the  fur- 
nace of  a  locomotive. 

If  such  an  unheard  of  act  in  violation  of  international  law  and 
civilization,  if  such  a  treacherous  attack  against  a  foreign  country 
defending  its  independence,  its  revolution  and  democratic  govern- 
ment; an  attack  accompanied  by  the  most  disgusting  acts  of  vio- 
lence and  murder,  did  not  meet  with  an  unanimous  protest  on  the  part 
of  all  civilized  nations  and  all  their  various  classes,  then  the  people 
of  the  Far  Eastern  Republic  cannot  explain  it  otherwise  than  by  the 
remoteness  of  the  theatre  of  the  Japanese  intervention  and  by  the 
complete  lack  of  information  on  the  part  of  other  nations  of  such 
acts  of  the  violent  and  bloody  policy  of  the  Japanese  militarists  as 
the  above  mentioned  attack  of  April  4-5  and  many  others. 

The  very  existence  of  the  achievements  of  the  revolution,  the  very 
possibility  of  a  democratic  state  reorganization  was  endangered. 
But  the  people  rose  unanimously  to  the  defense  of  the  revolution 
and  of  its  rights.  All  classes  and  organizations  of  Vladivos- 
tok, including  the  upper  classes  of  the  bourgeoisie,  protested  against 
the  Japanese  attack.  In  this  region  the  detachments  of  the  revolu- 
tionary troops  which  still  had  remained,  as  well  as  the  population 
that  was  joining  them,  again  prepared  to  start  a  partisan  war  against 
the  invaders. 

At  the  same  time  the  Japanese  armed  forces  which  had  left 
Khabarovsk  in  order  to  advance  against  the  Amur  region  and  to 
overthrow  there  the  popular  administration,  met  with  an  energetic, 
desperate  resistance  of  the  young  revolutionary  army  of  the  people 
to  whose  support  arose  first  the  peasant  population  of  the  Amur 
region  and  subsequently  all  the  remaining  population. 

Having  convinced  themselves  of  the  impossibility  of  crushing 
with  one  blow  the  popular  administration  formed  in  the  Far  East 
and  to  re-establish  the  influence  of  the  reactionary  elements,  the 
Japanese  command  of  the  expeditionary  forces  began  negotiations 
with  the  regional  government  of  the  Maritime  Province  as  to  the 
establishment  of  peaceful  relations  and  concerning  an  agreement  on 
mutual  rights. 

Deprived  of  the  possibility  of  offering  resistance,  the  regional 
administration  of  the  Maritime  Province  was  compelled  to  enter 
into  an  agreement,  according  to  which  all  Russian  armed  forces 
were  to  be  removed  to  a  distance  of  30  kilometers  from  the  city  of 
Vladivostok  and  from  the  zone  of  the  railroad  of  Khabarovsk,  except 
small  detachments  of  militia.  This  agreement  of  April  29,  con- 
tained also  some  other  points  which  in  the  grossest  way  violated 

18 


the  sovereign  rights' of  the  Russian  regional  government  and  prac- 
tically converted  it  into  a  powerless  prisoner  of  the  Japanese  mili- 
tary command. 

The  work  of  unity  had  thus  received  a  serious  blow;  there  arose 
also  new  obstacles  to  unity  as  a  consequence  of  the  seizure,  accom- 
plished with  Japanese  help,  of  Khabarovsk  and  some  points  of  the 
Usuri  railroad  by  the  bands  of  the  Ataman.  These  bands  com- 
mitted gruesome  acts  of  violence  upon  the  democratically  inclined 
population  and  the  representatives  of  the  democratic  administra- 
tion. 

These  circumstances  held  up  the  process  of  uniting  the  various 
regions,  by  preventing  them  from  communicating  with  each  other 
and  by  handing  an  important  part  of  the  country  into  the  hands 
of  the  interventionists. 

The  Japanese  troops  continued  their  attacks  against  the  Amur 
region,  and  its  population,  cut  off  from  all  the  remaining  country, 
had  to  resist  on  two  fronts — at  Khabarovsk  in  the  east,  and  at  the 
frontier  of  Transbaikalia  in  the  west — the  pressure  of  the  Japan- 
ese troops  and  the  detachments  of  Semenov. 

All  the  efforts  of  the  enemies  to  break  the  resistance  of  the  popu- 
lar revolutionary  army  of  the  Amur  region  remained,  however, 
without  success  and  the  Japanese  were  unable  to  penetrate  the  re- 
gion. 

The  work  of  strengthening  the  democratic  administration  in  the 
Maritime  Province  was  going  on.  Having  recovered  from  the  con- 
sequences of  the  heavy  blow  of  the  April  attack,  the  administra- 
tion of  the  Maritime  Province,  in  order  to  strengthen  the  popular 
revolutionary  power,  proceeded  to  call  the  National  Assembly,  rep- 
resenting all  classes  of  the  population  of  the  Maritime  Province. 
Impressed  by  the  determined  resistance  to  all  attempts  to  over- 
throw the  revolutionary  government  and  to  crush  the  aspirations 
towards  uniting  the  Far  East  on  the  basis  of  democratic  principles, 
the  Japanese  military  command,  represented  by  General  Oi,  pub- 
lished a  declaration  on  May  11,  in  which,  after  stating  that  Japan 
was  not  interested  in  the  territories  of  the  Far  East,  and  that  she 
recognizes  the  principle  of  non-interference  in  Russian  affairs,  he 
says  that  Japan  does  not  intend  to  support  groups  that  are  oppos- 
ing the  will  of  the  people,  that  she  has  no  objections  against  uniting 
the  Far  East  into  a  single  republic  organized  on  the  principles  of 
a  democratic  constitution,  and  is  ready  to  conclude  peace  and  to 
give  its  assistance  to  the  work  of  unification. 

The  declaration  of  General  Oi,  of  May  11,  was  the  second  turning 
point  in  the  development  of  the  events. 

Its  first  consequence  was  the  conclusion  of  an  armistice  on  the 
Khabarovsk  front  and  the  arresting  of  the  advance  against  the  Amur 
region  from  this  side. 

Immediately  afterwards,  on  May  25,  the  revolutionary  adminis- 

19 


tration  of  the  Amur  region  passed  a  resolution  of  adherence  to  the 
declaration  of  the  Verkhne-Udinsk  conference  of  April  6  concern- 
ing the  creation  of  an  independent  democratic  republic,  in  which  it 
recognized  the  authority  of  the  Verkhne-Udinsk  government  as  the 
Central  Government  of  the  Far  Eastern  Republic,  because  Vladi- 
vostok, which  after  the  events  of  April  4-5  and  the  April  agreement 
came  directly  under  the  pressure  of  the  interventionists,  could  not 
any  longer  remain  the  center  of  the  struggle  for  independence 
and  unity. 

This  act  constituted  the  beginning  of  the  effective  unification  of 
the  regional  governments. 

Subsequently,  relying  on  the  declaration  of  General  Oi  of  May 
11,  the  Government  of  Verkhne-Udinsk  proposed  to  the  Japanese 
military  command  to  begin  peace  negotiations  on  the  basis  of  the 
statements  expressed  in  that  declaration. 

The  preliminary  negotiations  between  the  Verkhne-Udinsk  gov- 
ernment and  the  representatives  of  the  Japanese  military  command 
took  place  on  May  24  and  25  at  Gongotta,  a  station  of  the  Trans- 
baikal  railroad  betwen  Chita  and  Verkhne-Udinsk. 

But  these  negotiations  did  not  bring  about  any  results,  because 
the  Japanese  delegates  did  not  show  a  sufficient  desire  to  estab- 
lish peaceful  relations  and  to  remove  the  obstacles  standing  in  the 
way  of  uniting  the  regions. 

On  the  contrary,  while  the  declaration  of  General  Oi,  of  May  11, 
categorically  asserted  that  Japan  was  not  willing  "to  complicate  the 
political  situation  of  the  country  by  offering  support  to  Russian  in- 
dividuals, acting  in  complete  disregard  of  the  will  of  the  Russian 
people,"  and  promised  that  in  regard  to  putting  into  effect  the  union 
of  the  regions  on  the  basis  of  self-government,  the  Japanese  mili- 
tary command  would  not  exert  any  interference  whatsoever — exactly 
at  that  moment  the  Japanese  military  authorities  undertook  steps 
aiming  at  the  creation  of  the  most  serious  obstacles  to  that  union, 
and  developing  a  new  pressure  against  the  authority  of  the  people, 
prepared  their  plans  for  aggression  against  the  Amur  region. 

Already  during  the  negotiations  in  Gongotta  this  policy  was  re- 
vealed with  sufficient  clearness;  the  Japanese  delegates  decidedly 
refusing  to  accept  all  proposals  tending  at  the  union  of  the  regions, 
and  declaring  that  they  wanted  to  deal  exclusively  with  the  sepa- 
rate regional  administrations. 

Thus  they  refused  to  discuss  the  inclusion  in  the  armistice  terms 
of  the  eastern  Transbaikal  front,  they  refused  to  grant  the  delegates 
of  the  Verkhne-Udinsk  government  permission  to  pass  through 
Chita  to  the  western  Amur  front  for  clearing  up  the  question  of 
the  discontinuance  of  the  military  activities  on  that  front — in  every 
way  emphatically  denying  to  the  Amur  region  the  right  to  recog- 
nize the  Verkhne-Udinsk  government  as  the  central  government 
of  the  Far  Eastern  Republic.     As  counterweight  to  the  unifica- 

20 


tion  of  the  popular  governments  on  a  democratic  basis,  the  Japanese 
delegates  upheld  the  reactionary  government  of  Semenov  in  Chita 
as  the  legitimate  authority  of  Transbaikalia. 

At  the  same  time  the  Japanese  military  command  increased  its 
support  to  the  reactionary  groups  in  the  east,  in  the  Maritime  Prov- 
ince. 

These  groups  undertook  anew  the  seizure  of  a  number  of  junc- 
tion points  on  the  Usuri  railroad,  in  consequence  of  which  the  va- 
rious regions  became  separated.  In  Khabarovsk  the  reactionary 
Likhoidov  attempts  a  complete  separation  of  the  city  and  the  dis- 
trict from  the  Maritime  Province,  by  declaring  it  an  independent 
territory. 

And  so  great  did  the  impudence  of  the  bands  of  black-hundreds 
become  that  on  the  station  Iman  an  unheard  of  crime  was  committed, 
a  crime  which  by  the  law  of  nations  of  all  times  has  been  consid- 
ered as  the  gravest  violation  of  international  law :  Two  citizens, 
Mr.  Utkin  and  Mr.  Grazhensky,  who  were  under  the  protection  of 
the  Jaanese  military  command,  in  their  quality  as  truce-bearers, 
and  were  the  representatives  of  the  government  of  the  Maritime 
Province,  were  killed  in  the  train  of  the  commander  of  the  14th 
Japanese  division,  by  the  henchmen  of  Ataman  Semenov  who  were 
acting  under  the  protection  of  the  Japanese  authorities. 

With  reference  to  the  Amur  regional  administration  which  rec- 
ognized the  Verkhne-Udinsk  government  as  the  central  govern- 
ment for  the  Far  Eastern  Republic,  the  Japanese  military  command 
used  a  determined  form  of  pressure  by  threatening  it  with  mili- 
tary actions  should  this  recognition  not  be  annulled. 

And  in  order  to  prevent  a  successful  coalescing  of  the  republic 
around  Verkhne-Udinsk  as  a  center,  the  Japanese  military  com- 
mand arbitrarily  put  forth  the  question  of  the  priority  either  of 
Semenov's  Chita  or  of  Vladivostok  which  was  under  the  pressure 
of  the  Japanese  army. 

After  the  Amur  administration  had  shown  itself  unwilling  to 
submit  to  the  threats  of  the  Japanese  staff  and  continued  firmly  in 
its  recognition  of  Verkhne-Udinsk  as  the  center  of  the  united  re- 
gions, and  in  refusing  to  negotiate  with  Semenov  as  if  he  were  a 
party  with  equal  rights,  more  or  less  open  preparations  were 
begun  to  attack  this  region. 

In  Khabarovsk  there  were  concentrated  the  artillery  and  the  en- 
gineering detachments,  the  transport  equipment,  etc. 

Later  on  became  known  the  secret  orders  of  the  Ministry  of  War 
in  Tokio  as  to  the  necessity  of  bringing  the  troops  into  a  state  of 
fighting  preparedness  for  a  punitive  expedition  against  the  Amur 
region. 

Under  these  circumstances  the  administration  of  the  Amur  and  of 
some  other  regions  agreed  to  accept  the  insistent  proposal  of  the 
Japanese  command  to  start  unity  negotiations  in  Vladivostok,  but  still 

21 


refusing  to  enter  into  any  agreement  with  the  administration  of  Ata- 
man Semenov,  which  was  persistently  requested  by  the  Japanese. 

The  representatives  of  the  democratic  governments  declared  to  the 
delegation  of  Semenov,  which  arrived  from  Chita,  that  the  surren- 
der of  his  power  was  absolutely  the  imperative  condition  for  start- 
ing negotiations  with  the  Chita  delegation. 

The  general  international  situation  was  at  that  moment  favor- 
able to  the  aspirations  of  the  Russian  people  in  the  Far  East,  to 
its  struggle  for  freedom,  unity  and  a  democratic  administration. 

The  Soviet  armies  on  the  Polish  front,  after  a  temporary  advance 
of  the  Poles,  began  in  turn  to  attack,  and  after  developing  their  suc- 
cesses, proved  that  the  Russian  nation  was  able  to  resist  the  aggres- 
sion of  the  militarists. 

At  the  same  time,  in  Japan  itself,  in  the  public  opinion  of  the 
country  and  in  the  parliament,  opposition  developed  to  the  Siberian 
expedition,  which  was  costing  the  country  great  amounts  without 
promise  of  returns.  In  the  same  direction  was  also  effective  the 
unanimity  with  which  all  classes  of  the  population  of  the  Far  East 
declared  their  readiness  to  defend  the  independence  of  the  country 
against  the  danger  of  a  Japanese  annexation,  and  to  protect  the 
new  democratic  order  against  the  attempts  on  the  part  of  the  reac- 
tionaries. 

In  Vladivostok  various  classes  of  the  population,  including  also 
the  bourgeoisie,  united  against  the  Japanese  peril,  and  there  was 
formed  a  coalition  cabinet  which  derived  its  authority  from  the 
National  Assembly,  with  the  watch- word  of  saving  the  country 
for  the  Russian  people. 

Great  popular  masses  in  the  Amur  region  and  in  Transbaikalia 
were  ready  to  make  all  sacrifices  in  the  defense  of  the  achievements 
of  the  Revolution. 

As  a  result  of  all  this,  there  was  published  on  July  3,  1920,  a 
declaration  of  the  Japanese  government  announcing  the  forthcom- 
ing evacuation  by  the  Japanese  troops  of  Transbaikalia,  and  at  the 
same  time  announcing  the  temporary  occupation  of  Sakhalin  and 
the  district  of  Nikolayevsk  as  a  retaliation  for  the  events  in  Nikol- 
ayevsk. 

CHAPTER  III. 

The  peace  negotiations  between  the  representatives  of  the  Japan- 
ese military  command  and  the  Verkhne-Udinsk  government  were 
soon  renewed  at  the  station  of  Gongota. 

The  negotiations  were  successfully  terminated  by  concluding,  on 
July  15,  an  agreement  concerning  the  cessation  of  military  activi- 
ties in  Western  Transbaikalia  as  well  a  on  the  Amur  front. 

Since  this  moment  the  Japanese  cannons  ceased  to  roar,  and  the 
tribute  of  blood  offered  by  the  Russian  population  of  the  Far  East 
for  the  unification  of  the  country  was  ended. 

22  _    . 


Thereupon  began  the  real  evacuation  of  Transbaikalia  by  the  Jap- 
anese  troops. 

Deprived  of  the  support  of  the  Japanese  whose  faithful  agent  he 
was  all  the  time,  Ataman  Semenov,  feeling  the  inevitable  downfall 
of  his  criminal  rule,  began  to  toss  about  in  various  directions,  now 
sending  a  cable  to  the  Japanese  heir  of  the  throne  about  the  con- 
tinuance of  the  Japanese  troops  in  Chita,  now  trying  to  play  the 
democratic  game  by  convoking  the  National  Assembly  in  that  city 
and  declaring  himself  in  his  proclamations  a  figure-head  in  the 
hands  of  imperialists. 

After  the  Japanese  departed,  the  population  of  the  liberated  locali- 
ties, first  of  all  in  the  regions  of  Sretensk  and  Nerchinsk,  in  Eastern 
Transbaikalia,  chased  Semenov*s  men  and  instituted  a  democratic, 
autonomous  administration  proclaiming  that  it  recognizes  the 
Verkhne-Udinsk  government. 

The  negotiations  for  uniting  the  various  regions  and  for  organiz- 
ing a  single  government  were,  in  the  meantime,  transferred  from 
Vladivostok  to  Verkhne-Udinsk,  which  was  free  from  armed  inter- 
vention, and  the  representatives  of  the  Amur  and  the  Maritime  re- 
gions arrived  there. 

At  the  preliminary  conference  of  the  representatives  of  all  re- 
gional governments  in  Verkhne-Udinsk,  in  September,  1920,  there 
was  reached  a  full  agreement  as  to  the  bases  of  unity  and  the  for- 
mation of  a  single  democratic  authority.  It  was  all  the  easier  to 
reach  this  agreement  as  the  recognition  of  democratic  principles  had 
alreadv  been  oreviously  proclaimed  in  all  parts  of  the  country  in  al- 
most identical  expressions  in  the  representative  organs  of  the  re- 
gions. 

But  all  obstacles  to  the  unity  of  the  republic  were  by  far  not 
yet  overcome. 

The  reactionarv  administration  of  Ataman  Semenov  in  Chita, 
which,  left  to  itself,  was  oowerless,  became  a  convenient  tool  in  the 
hands  of  the  interventionists  for  the  purpose  of  hampering  the  work 
of  unity,  in  order  to  prevent  the  organization  of  a  single  demo- 
cratic organization   for  the  entire  rermblic. 

For  this  purpose  the  Japanese  military  command  persisted  in 
demanding  the  recognition  of  Ataman  Semenov,  asking  the  demo- 
cratic governments  to  consider  him  as  an  equal  party  in  the  nego- 
tiations and  not  refraining  from  open  threats  in  order  to  give 
more  weight  to  their  insistent  demands. 

Thus,  on  September  11,  the  Tapanese  semi-official,  information 
bureau  issued  a  report  under  the  heading  "The  treacherous  atti- 
tude of  the  Verkhne-Udinsk  government  in  connection  with  the 
proiect  of  the  creation  of  a  buffer  state."  containing  accusations  as 
to  the  eauivocal  attitude  and  bad  faith  of  the  Verkhne-Udinsk  gov- 
ernment and  reproaching  it  for  the  disagreement  between  the  various 
Russian  local  governments,  which  distrusting  each  other,  are  wag- 
ing a  struggle  for  hegemony. 

23 


In  speaking  of  the  disagreement  of  the  local  governments,  the 
organ  of  the  Japanese  staff  meant  the  unwillingness  of  the  demo- 
cratic governments  to  leave  the  power  in  Chita,  in  the  hands  of  the 
Ataman  and  to  allow  him  to  exert  his  criminal  influence  on  the  work 
of  unity. 

These  new  attempts  of  brutal  interference  in  the  internal  af- 
fairs of  the  Russian  people  had  no  other  aim  but  to  prevent  the 
creation  of  a  democratic  state  organization. 

For  the  very  name  of  Ataman  Semenov,  whose  rule  the  Jap- 
anese military  command  wanted  to  preserve,  spoke  already  for  it- 
self. 

The  hangman  of  Transbaikalia,  who  had  aroused  against  himself, 
by  the  most  inhuman  acts  in  his  torture  chambers,  bv  his  brutal 
murders  of  his  opponents,  all  the  population  of  Transbaikalia,  which 
had  sent  against  him  eight  regiments  of  Argun  Cossacks,  a  rob- 
ber who  had  thrown  aside  every  trace  of  respect  towards  the  rights 
and  interests  of  the  people,  could  not.  of  course,  be  admitted  to 
participation  in  the  construction  of  a  democratic  state. 

It  is  also  easy  to  understand  that  the  support  eiven  him  by  the 
Japanese  can  be  explained  by  their  intention  to  maintain  a  constant 
obstacle  to  the  creation  of  a  single  democratic  republic. 

Having  implanted  himself  in  Chita,  Semenov  prevented  the  com- 
munication between  the  various  regions,  bv  prohibiting  the  passage 
of  the  delegates  of  the  democratic  governments,  and  after  the  evac- 
uation of  Chita  bv  the  Japanese,  he  led  his  main  forces  to  the 
east,  toward  the  Chinese  border,  in  the  region  of  the  station  Borza- 
Dauria,  where  he  prepared  himself  again  for  an  armed  attack  against 
the  democratic  revolutionary  organs  with  the  intention  of  dispers- 
ing the  National  Assemblv  of  Chita  which  had  been  called  bv  him- 
self. 

However,  the  situation  again  turned  out  unoronitious  to  to  the 
enemies  of  the  revolutionary  people  and  their  aspirations  for  unitv. 

The  American  government  protests  against  the  occupation  of 
Sakhalin,  the  successes  of  the  Soviet  armies  reach  their  highest 
point,  in  China  the  partv  of  the  friends  of  Tamn  suffers  defeat, 
and  in  the  public  opinion  of  Japan  grows  the  hostile  attitude  to- 
wards the  Siberian  expedition. 

The  occupational  authorities  in  Siberia  have  to  relent  a  little  in 
their  brutal  and  aggressive  policy,  by  ceasing  to  openly  support 
the  power  of  the  Ataman. 

On  September  18  the  commander  of  the  Tananese  troops  in  Si- 
beria announces  that  the  district  of  Khabarovsk  is  coiner  to  be 
cleared.  And  a  month  later  thp  peasant  population  of  the  region 
of  Chita  rises  in  a  wave  of  anger  against  the  criminal  doings  of  the 
Ataman's  creatures,  and  under  the  nressure  of  the  mrtisan  detach- 
ments. Semenov  is  forced  to  abandon  Chita,  fleeing  in  an  aeronlane. 

On  October  20  the  capital  of  Transbaikalia  is  occupied  by  the 
revolutionarv  troops. 

24 


In  a  number  of  stubborn  and  famous  battles  at  Borza,  Sharasu- 
nam,  Dauria,  the  popular  revolutionary  army  completely  routs  the 
enemy,  who  attempted  to  restore  his  rule  over  Chita  and  to  take 
revenge  on  the  population  that  had  risen  against  him. 

On  November  18  some  detachments  of  the  revolutionary  army 
took  the  station  Dauria,  the  last  bulwark  of  Semenov  in  Trans- 
baikalia, and  his  troops,  pursued  towards  Manchuria,  were  compelled 
to  disarm. 

CHAPTER  IV. 

In  the  meantime,  immediately  after  Chita  was  occupied  by  the 
revolutionary  troops,  there  assembled  in  that  city  the  Unity  Con- 
ference, this  time,  of  all  the  various  regional  governments  of  the  Far 
East. 

In  its  declaration  of  November  9,  the  Unity  Conference,  in  the 
name  of  the  representatives  of  all  regions,  endorsed  the  declara- 
tion of  April  6,  concerning  the  independence  of  the  republic,  the  es- 
tablishment of  a  democratic  administration  the  basis  of  which  was  to 
be  the  introduction  of  all  civil  liberties  and  the  preservation  of  the 
principle  of  private  property. 

The  declaration  announced  that  in  the  course  of  the  next  two  or 
three  months  there  was  to  be  called  a  Constituent  Assembly  of  the 
Far  East  on  the  basis  of  a  universal,  equal,  direct  and  secret  suf- 
frage and  that  out  of  the  memberhip  of  this  conference  there  was  to 
be  elected  a  single  provisional  government  of  the  Republic;  that  in 
the  moment  in  which  it  is  elected,  all  existing  governments  have  to 
give  up  their  state  prerogatives  and  shall  become  organs  of  the  lo- 
cal autonomous  administration  until  new  elections  take  place  on  the 
basis  of  the  law  concerning  the  autonomous  local  administration. 

The  declaration  granted  to  the  last  remainders  of  the  army  of  Kol- 
chak,  Kappel  and  Semenov,  who  had  surrendered  their  arms,  personal 
safety,  permitting  them  to  return  to  peaceful  work. 

Immediately  afterwards  the  conference  elected  the  Provisional 
Government  of  the  Far  Eastern  Republic,  the  main  task  of  which 
was  the  calling  of  the  Constituent  Assembly. 

Thus  the  task  of  uniting  the  Far  East  in  one  single  state  was  for- 
mally accomplished;  and  the  entire  territory  with  the  exception  of 
Sakhalin  and  the  district  of  Nikolayevsk  which  were  occupied  by  the 
interventionists,  were  united  under  the  rule  of  the  Provisional 
Government. 

Thus  the  people  of  the  Far  East,  having  overcome  all  obstacles 
and  difficulties  by  their  tremendous  efforts  and  sacrifices,  attained 
the  aim  of  unity  which  they  had  set  for  themselves. 

From  that  time  on  it  was  necessary  to  strengthen  the  consum- 
mated unity  by  giving  it  a  solid  basis  of  democratic  state  organiza- 
tion and  to  find  the  force  to  conquer  also  all  efforts  of  the  enemies 
of  the  democratic  government  and  of  the  adversaries  of  the  unity 
of  the  Russian  Far  East  who  were  aiming  at  the  destruction  of  the 

25 


results  obtained  and  who  systematically  violated  the  right  of  the  Rus- 
sian population  of  the  Far  East  to  their  independent  existence. 

To  the  number  of  these  enemies  did  not  belong  Soviet  Russia, 
which  is  nationally  akin  to  the  Far  Eastern  Republic.  Its  govern- 
ment had  already  on  October  28  sent  a  greeting  address  to  the  Con- 
ference in  which  it  expressed  the  hope  that  the  unity  would  be 
successfully  attained  and  that  the  friendly  relations  between  the 
young  republic  and  the  mother  country  would  be  strengthened. 

The  unity  just  achieved  was  endangered  and  strengthened  from 
another  side,  i.e.,  from  the  side  of  the  same  foreign  intervention. 

These  menaces  against  the  united  republic,  the  hostile  attitude 
of  the  Japanese  military  command  against  it,  appeared  immediately 
after  the  realization  of  unity. 

Not  expecting  that  the  revolutionary  troops  would  so  quickly  de- 
feat Semenov,  whom  they  diligently  supplied  with  military  equip- 
ment and  provisions,  the  Japanese  military  authorities  were  unable 
to  assist  him  with  active  military  co-operation. 

.But  they  took  him  immediately  under  their  protection  after  his 
army  was  dispersed  at  Dauren,  and  they  proceeded  to  disarm  it  in 
such  a  way  that  his  main  forces  should  remain  armed.  These  forces, 
according  to  the  plan  of  Semenov  and  the  Japanese  militarists  who 
helped  him,  were  afterwards  to  be  transferred  to  the  Maritime  Prov- 
ince with  the  purpose  of  seizing  the  power  there  and  starting  a  new 
civil  war  against  the  people  and  its  democratic  government. 

The  best  proof  that  this  plan  existed  and  that  the  Japanese  mili- 
tary command  took  part  in  the  transport  of  Semenov's  armed  bands 
into  the  Maritime  Province,  in  order  to  create  a  new  obstacle  to  the 
strengthening  of  the  obtained  unity  of  the  republic,  exists  in  the  last 
command  of  Ataman  Semenov  issued  after  the  defeat  of  his  army 
when  he  retreated  behind  the  Chinese  border.  This  command  con- 
tains, literally,  the  following  passage :  "The  Japanese  military  com- 
mand guarantees  to  the  Far  Eastern  (Semenov's)  army  the  transfer 
to  the  Maritime  Province,  but  at  the  present  time  Col.  Isome  does  not 
have  at  his  disposal  a  sufficient  number  of  armed  forces  to  cover  our 
retreat.  Therefore,  in  order  to  create  a  precedent  of  international 
character,  and  to  give  to  the  Japanese  command  a  reason  to  decidedly 
advance  its  troops,  and  to  close  the  frontier  to  the  Reds,  after  re- 
moving the  Chinese  who  would  stand  in  the  way,  it  is  necessary,  if 
the  situation  on  the  front  will  force  us  to  do  so,  to  penetrate  as  far 
as  possible  into  alien  territory  without  paying  any  attention  to  the 
Chinese  troops  on  the  border." 

There  is  nothing  to  be  added  to  a  document  which  so  eloquently 
testifies  that  the  transfer  of  the  armed  men  of  Semenov  to  the  Mari- 
time Province  was  accomplished  with  the  direct  participation  of  the 
Japanese  military  authorities. 

This  transfer  became  the  source  of  new  violations  of  peace  and  or- 
der within  the  borders  of  the  Far  Eastern  Republic,  a  source  of  all 

26 


further  obstacles  to  the  strengthening  of  the  unity  of  the  republic 
and  its  democratic  organization.  At  the  same  time  the  faithful  serv- 
ant and  right-hand  man  of  Semenov,  Baron  Ungern,  provided  by  the 
same  hand  with  equipment,  arms  and  money,  a  man  who  had  dis- 
graced himself  by  the  most  repelling  crimes,  advanced  with  a  band 
of  cutthroats  from  Transbaikalia  to  the  south,  into  the  heart  of  Mon- 
golia, in  order  to  serve  there  the  interests  of  Japanese  intervention 
and  to  prepare  his  criminal  adventure  against  the  interests  of  China 
and  the  population  of  the  Far  Eastern  Republic. 

In  the  meantime  the  Japanese  military  command  continued  creat- 
ing, within  the  republic  itself,  obstacles  to  the  consolidation  of  the 
component  parts  of  the  Republic  that  had  united  at  the  November 
conference  in  Chita,  and  to  the  establishment  of  a  solid  democratic 
order  in  the  entire  territory  of  the  Republic.  By  means  of  memo- 
randums and  unofficial  communications  the  Japanese  military  com- 
mand in  Vladivostok  tried  to  restrain  the  Vladivostok  administra- 
tion and  the  National  Assembly  from  the  recognition  of  the  deci- 
sions of  the  Unity  Conference  and  from  submitting  to  the  single 
government  that  was  elected  there. 

Matters  went  so  far  that  General  Oi,  the  Commander  of  the  Ex- 
peditionary Troops,  sent  for  the  deputies  of  the  National  Assembly 
of  the  Maritime  Province  and  pronouncing  coarse  threats  menaced 
them  with  repressions  in  the  event  that  the  Maritime  Province  should 
submit  to  the  government  that  was  elected  at  the  conference. 

At  the  same  time  agents  of  the  Japenese  General  Staff  in  Vladi- 
vostok were  conducting  an  underground  activity  with  a  view  to 
creating  general  confusion  and  were  spreading  rumors  about  the  pos- 
sibility of  a  reactionary  coup  with  the  help  of  the  Japanese. 

But  all  this  was  of  no  avail,  and  the  National  Assembly  of  the 
Maritime  Province  recognized  all  the  decisions  of  the  Unity  Con- 
ference and  of  the  Provisional  Government  of  the  entire  Republic. 

This  decision  of  the  National  Assembly  of  Vladivostok  greatly 
strengthened  the  work  of  unity. 

Thereupon  the  Japanese  authorities  brought  Semenov  from  Man- 
churia to  Vladivostok,  from  which  they  escorted  him  with  an  hon- 
orary guard  to  their  own  territory,  namely,  Port  Arthur. 

In  the  meantime  the  dispersed  detachments  of  Semenov's  army — 
which  in  spite  of  all  the  protests  of  the  Central  Government  and  of 
the  local  administration  of  the  Maritime  Province  had  been  trans- 
ferred to  that  Province — seized  the  station  Grodekovo  as  well  as 
other  points  of  the  Usuri  railroad,  creating  there  a  new  Chita  with 
their  particular  laws  and  authorities  without  any  regard  to  the  demo- 
cratic organs  of  the  administration  and  the  law  of  the  Far  Eastern 
Republic. 

Locomotives  and  whole  trains  were  held  up.  Agents  of  the  demo- 
cratic government  as  well  as  other  citizens  were  taken  down  to  be 
subjected  to  all  kinds  of  injuries  and  tortures  by  the  soldiers  of 
Semenov  and  Kapf>el. 

27 


All  efforts  of  the  democratic  authorities  to  introduce  order  and  to 
put  an  end  to  the  misdeeds  of  the  Semenov-Kappel  men  were 
thwarted  by  the  opposition  of  the  Japanese  authorities. 

Subsequently  the  Japanese  diplomatic  representative  in  Vladivos- 
tok issued  to  the  regional  authorities  a  notice  by  which  almost  all 
fisheries  of  the  Maritime  Province  came  under  the  jurisdiction  of  the 
Japanese  military  command. 

But  notwithstanding  all  obstacles  and  difficulties  placed  in  the  way 
of  the  democratic  state  organization  of  the  Russian  Far  East,  the 
Central  Government,  created  at  the  Unity  Conference  in  Chita,  un- 
flinchingly continued  to  lay  the  foundations  of  a  new  life  and  to 
work  at  the  fulfillment  of  the  task  entrusted  to  it,  namely,  the  con- 
vocation of  the  Constituent  Assembly  of  the  Republic. 

This  work  was  brought  to  a  successful  conclusion,  and  on  Decem- 
ber 12,  1920,  the  Provisional  Government  published  a  decision  ac- 
cording to  which  the  elections  to  the  Constituent  Assembly  over  the 
entire  territory  of  the  Far  Eastern  Republic  were  to  take  place  on 
January  9,  1921,  and  the  Assembly  was  to  convene  on  January  25. 

The  elections  were  held  everywhere  at  the  fixed  period,  but  the 
opening  of  the  Constituent  Assembly  was  delayed  some  two  or 
three  weeks,  until  February  12,  1921,  when  the  Constituent  Assembly 
of  the  Republic  convened  in  Chita  and  began  its  work. 

In  both  the  voting  procedure  and  the  composition  of  the  elected 
body  the  rights  and  the  interests  of  the  people  and  the  introduction 
of  a  strict  democratic  order  and  constitution,  were  fully  guaran- 
teed. 

The  elections  were  held  on  the  basis  of  the  most  democratic  suf- 
frage, according  to  the  system  of  proportional  representation. 

The  election  campaign  took  place  with  complete  freedom  of  writ- 
ten and  oral  propaganda  for  all  parties  and  groups  of  the  population. 

Suffice  it  to  sav  that  participation  in  the  voting  was  even  allowed 
to  the  soldiers  of  Kappel's  army,  who  a  short  time  ago  had  struggled 
against  the  revolution  in  Transbaikalia ;  they  settled  down  in  ihe 
Maritime  Province  and  sent  as  their  representatives  to  the  Constitu- 
ent Assembly  two  generals,  Verzhbitsky  and  Molchanov,  who  were 
at  their  head  during  the  autumn  (1920)  struggles  against  the  revo- 
lutionary army. 

These  two  delegates,  however,  did  not  take  part  in  the  activities 
of  the  Constituent  Assembly,  and  preferred  to  stay  in  their  locali- 
ties, where,  under  the  protection  of  Japanese  bayonets,  they  or- 
ganized conspiracies  and  prepared  reactionary  upheavals  against  the 
Assembly. 

The  number  of  voters  who  participated  in  the  elections  was  very 
large ;  the  percentage  of  the  voters  was  in  many  districts  as  high,  as 
80  ner  cent,  nowhere  lower  than  60  per  cent. 

The  largest  number  of  representatives  was  sent  by  the^  revolution- 
ary and  democratic  peasantry,  which  forms  the  prevailing  part  of 

28 


the  population  of  the  Far  East,  and  which  had  borne  on  its  should- 
ers the  whole  burden  of  the  struggle  for  the  emancipation  of  the 
country  from  the  reactionaries  and  the  interventionists. 

The  representatives  of  this  peasantry  formed  in  the  Constituent 
Assembly  the  largest  parliamentary  group,  counting  about  220  depu- 
ties, i.e.,  60  per  cent  of  the  general  number  of  all  members,  which  is 
called  the  group  of  the  revolutionary  toiling  peasantry,  or  the  group 
of  the  majority,  as  it  was  called  in  the  Assembly. 

The  next  largest  group  was  the  communist  group  comprising  80 
to  90  delegates  and  representing  the  working  class  and  the  most  revo- 
lutionary elements  of  the  cities  who  saw  in  the  communists  the 
stanchest  enemies  of  intervention  and  defenders  of  the  rights  of  the 
people.  '"*  ""*' 

The  third  group  consisted  of  the  representatives  of  the  wealthiest 
peasants,  called  the  group  of  the  peasant  minority.  It  had  30  dele- 
gates. 

Then  followed  the  less  numerous  groups  of  the  Social  Demo- 
crats, of  the  Social  Revolutionists  of  the  Right  and  of  the  wealthy 
bourgeoisie,  who  had  all  together  58  delegates. 

The  group  of  the  peasant  majority,  forming  the  fundamental 
force  of  the  Constituent  Assembly,  by  its  votes,  often  predetermines 
the  result  of  the  voting.  But  it  must  be  pointed  out  that  in  manv  of 
the  most  important  questions  of  principle  the  decisions  of  the  Con- 
stituent Assembly  were  taken  by  an  unanimous  vote. 

The  first  achievement  of  the  Constituent  Assembly  after  hearing 
the  reports  of  the  Provisional  Government  and  the  various  minis- 
tries, and  after  every  group  had  made  its  declaration,  was  the  unani- 
mous adoption  of  a  general  edict  recognizine  the  decisions  of  all  re- 
gional representative  organs  and  of  the  conferences  of  the  regional 
governments,  concerning  the  formation  of  an  independent  state — 
the  democratic  Far  Eastern  Republic.  In  a  special  article  of  the  dec- 
laration of  the  Constituent  Assemblv  it  was  stated  that  the  presence 
of  whatsoever  armed  forces  of  foreign  governments  within  the  bor- 
ders of  the  republic,  and  the  interference  of  whatsoever  foreign 
forces  in  the  internal  affairs  of  the  countrv.  and  anv  other  violation 
of  the  rights  of  the  Russian  people  in  the  Far  East,  is  considered  as  a 
brutal  outrage,  and  as  a  violation  of  basic  international  law  and  civili- 
zation. 

The  declaration  stated  that  the  foundations  of  the  state  organiza- 
tion of  the  republic  should  be  the  principles  of  real  democracy  and 
self-?overnment.  put  into  effect  bv  popular  representation  on  the 
basis  of  universal,  eoual,  direct  and  secret  suffrage,  guaranteeing  to 
all  citizens  political  liberty  and  the  preservation  of  the  principle  of 
private  property. 

In  a  separate  article  the  declaration  also  stated  that  the  republic  in- 
tended to  take  measures  for  the  invitation  of  foreign  capital  and  ini- 
tiative for  the  development  of  th*  natural)  resources  of  the  country. 

29 


The  ensuing  act  of  the  Constituent  Assembly  was  the  adoption  of 
solemn  appeals  to  the  governments  and  the  nations  of  the  whole 
world,  and  particularly  to  the  governments  of  the  larger  powers, 
the  United  States  of  America,  England,  France  and  Japan,  which 
participated  in  the  landing  of  their  troops  in  1918  on  the  territory 
which  became  part  of  the  Far  Eastern  Republic. 

In  the  first  of  these  appeals,  the  Constituent  Assembly  informs 
the  governments  and  the  nations  of  the  creation  of  an  independent 
Far  Eastern  Republic  and  declares  that  it  is  necessary  for  the  suc- 
cessful development  of  the  new  democratic  country  that  the  Far 
Eastern  Republic  should  be  accepted  with  equal  rights  in  the  fam- 
ily of  the  other  independent  nations  and  that  its  territory  should 
be  liberated  from  foreign  troops  and  intervention. 

In  its  appeal  to  the  nations  which  took  part  in  the  intervention, 
the  Constituent  Assembly  declared  that  the  purpose  for  which  they 
sent  their  troops  on  Siberian  territory  was  to  co-operate  with  the 
Czecho- Slovaks  and  help  the  Russian  people  to  resist  German  ag- 
gression; that  in  their  declarations  all  governments  solemnly  prom- 
ised to  withdraw  their  troops  as  soon  as  these  tasks  would  be  ful- 
filled, adhering  all  the  time  to  the  principle  of  non-interference  in 
the  internal  affairs  of  the  nation. 

Calling  further  attention  to  the  fact  that  the  intervention  was 
continued  even  after  the  above  mentioned  aims  were  attained,  it  put 
before  all  the  governments  that  had  participated  in  it,  the  question 
of  the  responsibility  for  the  continued  presence  and  the  activities 
of  the  Japanese  troops  on  the  territory  of  the  Far  Eastern  Republic, 
in  full  contradiction  to  the  lofty  and  solemn  declarations  of  these 
countries. 

In  particular,  in  its  note  to  the  Japanese  Government,  the  Con- 
stituent Assembly  characterized  the  situation  which  was  created  as  a 
result  of  the  activities  of  the  Japanese  military  command  on  the  ter- 
ritory of  the  republic. 

In  the  memorandum  to  the  Government  of  the  United  States  of 
America  the  Constituent  Assembly  referred  to  the  declaration  of 
the  American  Government  of  August  5,  1918,  which  "most  sin- 
cerely and  solemnly"  declared  to  the  Russian  people  that  the  inter- 
vention did  not  mean  any  attempt  against  the  political  sovereignty, 
that  it  did  not  mean  any  interference  in  its  internal  or  even  local 
matters,  that  the  exclusive  and  only  aim  of  the  intervention  was  to 
offer  such  help  as  would  be  acceptable  to  the  Russian  people  them- 
selves in  their  aspiration  again  to  become  masters  of  their  own 
affairs,  of  their  own  territory  and  of  their  own  destiny.  In  re- 
calling these  promises  the  Constituent  Assembly  raised  the  ques- 
tion of  the  responsibility  for  those  real,  actual  concomitants  of  the 
still  existing  military  intervention  which  expressed  itself  in  a  con- 
tinuous brutal  interference  in  the  internal:  affairs  on  the  part  of 
the  Japanese  military  command,  in  open  assistance  to  reactionary 

30 


groups,  and  in  endless  violations  of  the  rights  and  the  interests  of 
the  population  of  the  Far  Eastern  Republic.  Finally  the  Constitu- 
ent Assembly  expressed  the  hope  that  the  government  of  the  great 
democratic  republic  would  recognize  the  independence  of  the  Far 
Eastern  Republic. 

With  a  feeling  of  bitterness  it  must  be  remarked  that  not  one  of 
the  governments  of  the  large  countries,  except  China,  answered  the 
address  and  the  appeals  of  the  popular  representation  of  the  young 
democratic  republic  of  the  Far  East  to  aid  it  in  its  efforts  to  defend 
its  rights  to  an  independent  existence  and  to  help  it  in  the,  develop- 
ment and  strengthening  of  its  democratic  state  organization. 

After  the  formulation  of  the  above  addresses  the  Constituent 
Assembly  entered  upon  the  elaboration  of  the  fundamental  laws 
which  are  the  bases  of  the  democratic  constitution  of  the  country. 

Tne  deliberation  and  the  adoption  of  the  fundamental  laws  took 
up  the  greater  part  of  the  working  time  of  the  Constituent  Assembly. 

The  size  and  the  purpose  of  the  present  outline  do  not  permit  us 
to  enter  into  details  as  to  the  contents  of  the  fundamental  laws  es- 
tablished by  the  Constituent  Assembly.  It  will  be  sufficient  if  we 
mention  that  in  their  main,  essential  features  they  represent  a  de- 
velopment of  the  theses  expressed  in  the  declaration  which  was 
adopted  by  the  Constituent  Assembly  in  the  very  beginning  of  its 
deliberations. 

The  full  text  of  the  Constitution,  issued  separately  among  other 
official  documents,  contains  the  following  sections:  General  prin- 
ciples of  the  state  organization  of  the  republic;  the  domains  of  the 
republic ;  the  rights  of  the  citizens ;  the  local  organs  of  of  the  central 
government  and  of  the  autonomous  administration;  fundamental 
principles  of  the  economical  structure  of  the  republic;  the  defense 
of  the  republic;  revision  of  the  fundamental  laws;  the  emblem  and 
the  flag  of  the  republic;  statement  about  the  first  National  As- 
sembly and  the  election  of  the  government  of  the  Republic. 

After  completing  the  Constitution  and  after  adopting  the  motion 
concerning  the  first  National  Assembly  of  the  republic,  the  Constitu- 
ent Assembly,  in  accordance  with  the  Constitution,  instituted  a  per- 
manent government  consisting  of  seven  members  which  took  over 
the  full  civil  and  military  authority  in  the  territory  of  the  Far  East- 
ern Republic  subject  to  the  fundamental  laws  of  the  country. 

Immediately  afterwards,  after  issuing  an  appeal  to  the  popula- 
tion of  the  country,  the  Constituent  Assembly  declared  itself  dis- 
solved on  April  26,  1921. 

CHAPTER  V. 

The  conclusion  of  the  work  of  the  Constituent  Assembly  marked 
the  final  establishment  of  the  foundation  on  which  the  young  demo- 
cratic state  of  the  Far  East  was  to  grow  and  become  strong.  But 
the  end  of  the  trials  confronting  the  people  of  the  Far  Eastern 
Republic  was  still  far  away. 

31 


Even  during  the  deliberations  of  the  Constituent  Assembly,  the 
ambitions  of  the  adversaries  of  democratic  institutions  and  of  the 
unity  of  the  Far  Eastern  Republic  found  their  concrete  expression 
in  the  activities  of  the  Japanese  military  authorities  and  their  agents 
among  the  Russian  reactionaries.  From  these  quarters  the  efforts 
to  check  the  organization  of  democratic  institutions  on  the  territory 
occupied  by  the  Japanese  never  relaxed. 

The  policy  of  the  seizure  of  separate  localities  by  reactionaries  and 
of  the  overthrow  of  the  organs  of  the  democratic  administration 
established  by  the  Constituent  Assembly  was  continued. 

Thus,  in  Vladivostok,  the  Japanese  military  command,  even  after 
the  union  of  the  various  regions  had  been  effected,  compelled  the  lo- 
cal popular  authorities  to  comply  with  the  agreement  of  January  29, 
1920,  and  not  to  admit  any  armed  forces  of  the  government  of  the 
Far  Eastern  Republic  into  the  city  and  within  30  versts  from  the 
zone  of  the  Usuri  railway  from  the  station  Iman,  except  a  negligible 
detachment  of  militia. 

Thus  the  men  of  Semenov  and  Kappel  who  had  settled  down  in 
that  region  were  ensured  full  liberty  to  violate  public  order  and  to 
prepare  the  reactionary  coup  in  the  Maritime  Province. 

Not  only  was  the  democratic  regional  administration  unable  to 
undertake  any  measures  for  preventing  the  attacks  on  the  part  of  the 
reactionary  elements,  owing  to  the  fact  that  they  were  supported 
and  aided  by  the  Japanese  military  authorities,  but  it  was  even  de- 
prived of  the  possibility  of  offering  any  resistance  in  the  event  of 
such  an  occurrence. 

Some  time  before,  on  March  30,  1921,  the  Japanese  had  disarmed 
that  tiny  reserve  of  militia  that  was  at  the  disposal  of  the  regional 
administration. 

Thereupon,  headed  by  General  Lokhvitsky,  the  men  of  Semenov 
and  Kappel,  who  had  taken  refuge  under  the  protecting  wings  of 
the  Japanese  authorities,  made  an  attempt  to  seize  the  government, 
which  at  that  time  did  not  succeed.  Then  the  leaders  of  the  revolt, 
who  had  been  arrested  but  were  liberated  at  the  demand  of  the  Jap- 
anese authorities,  began  actively  to  arm  their  adherents  and  to  pre- 
pare a  new  attack. 

The  circumstances  accompanying  the  second  and  successful  at- 
tempt of  May  26-27,  which  ended  with  the  seizure  of  the  Maritime 
Province  by  the  reactionary  adventurers,  form  new  evidence  of  an 
unexampled,  impudent  intervention  of  foreign  militarists  in  the  in- 
ternal affairs  of  the  republic,  evidence  which  ought  to  make  the 
part  played  by  Japanese  intervention  in  the  Russian  Far  East  per- 
fectly clear  to  all  who  do  not  want  to  close  their  eyes  knowingly 
to  these  matters. 

About  the  20th  of  May  news  reached  Vladivostok  that  in  spite 
of  the  insistence  of  the  militarists  the  Tokio  government  had  decided 
to  begin  the  evacuation  of  the  Maritime  Province. 

32 


Immediately  the  local  regional  administration  was  given  the  trust- 
worthy information  that  the  military  authorities,  in  their  endeavor 
at  any  price  to  prevent  the  evacuation,  are  making  efforts  to  pro- 
voke any  kind  of  disorders  in  order  to  have  a  pretext  to  postpone  the 
evacuation. 

Two  days  afterwards  the  organs  of  the  government  learned  that 
in  one  of  the  houses  of  Vladivostok  was  a  gathering  of  armed  con- 
spirators who  were  preparing  a  new  insurrection  for  the  next  night. 

The  regional  administration  sent  its  agents  in  order  to  have  this 
house  searched. 

A  Japanese  flag,  however,  was  hoisted  on  the  house  and  the 
owner  refused  to  allow  the  representatives  of  the  government  to 
proceed  with  the  search. 

When  the  agents  nevertheless  entered  the  house  they  found  al- 
ready in  the  first  room  grenades,  rifles,  cartridges  and  a  group  of 
armed  men. 

They  were  unable  to  enter  the  other  rooms,  as  at  that  very  mo- 
ment there  appeared  a  detachment  of  Japanese  gendarmes  which  for- 
cibly compelled  the  representatives  of  the  government  to  leave. 

The  Japanese  declared  that  they  themselves  would  proceed  with 
the  search. 

The  next  day  they  informed  the  organs  of  the  regional  govern- 
ment that  as  a  result  of  the  search  they  had  really  found  at  that  place 
two  machine  guns  and  a  great  quantity  of  other  weapons  and  that 
the  guilty  parties  would  be  prosecuted. 

Meanwhile  two  hours  later  the  last  armed  forces  of  the  Far  East- 
ern Republic  in  the  Maritime  Province,  the  escort  of  the  military 
commander  and  the  detachments  of  the  militia,  were  surrounded  by 
the  Japanese  troops. 

They  were  requested  to  surrender  their  arms  in  order  to  have 
them  checked  up.    Only  part  was  returned  in  the  evening. 

And  the  following  day,  on  May  26,  the  armed  men  of  Semenov's 
and  Kappel's  forces  invaded  the  city,  occupied  the  representative 
institutions  and  proclaimed  the  formation  of  a  new,  reactionary  ad- 
ministration headed  by  Merkulov. 

And  when  the  last  remainders  of  the  armed  forces  of  the  Far 
Eastern  Republic,  as  well  as  the  population,  attempted  to  offer  re- 
sistance, they  were  immediately  surrounded  by  Japanese  soldiers  and 
disarmed. 

The  Japanese  military  command,  after  this  had  happened,  gave  out 
a  statement  about  the  "bloodless"  revolution,  and  about  its  (Japan- 
ese) neutrality. 

History  hardly  knows  of  a  more  unexampled  case  of  a  shocking 
interference  in  the  affairs  of  a  foreign  people. 

Again  the  unity  of  the  territory  of  the  Far  Eastern  Republic  was 
violated.  Again  within  its  borders  there  was  created  by  the  inter- 
ventionists a  reactionary  stronghold  which  was  hindering  the  demo- 

33 


cratic  development  of  the  state  organization  and  became  a  new  rally- 
ing ground  of  civil  war. 

Coupled  with  the  Japanese  occupation  of  Sakhalin  and  the  dis- 
trict of  Nikolayevsk,  the  passing  of  the  Maritime  Province  into  the 
hands  of  the  interventionists  and  reactionaries  now  in  control,  opened 
a  wound  in  the  body  of  a  weak  democratic  country,  still  drip- 
ping with  the  blood  of  the  Russian  people. 

But  the  attack  of  the  enemies  of  the  young  Far  Eastern  Republic 
against  the  rights  of  the  people  and  the  unity  that  was  attained  after 
so  many  efforts,  did  not  stop  there.  Baron  Ungern,  a  faithful  tool 
of  the  Japanese  militarists,  who  immediately  after  Semenov  was 
driven  out  from  Transbaikalia,  went  to  Mongolia,  was  to  commence 
activities  there  against  the  republic. 

As  far  back  as  February,  1921,  availing  himself  of  the  dissaf- 
fection  of  the  Mongolians  to  the  Chinese  administraton,  he  aroused 
them  to  a  revolt  againt  the  Chinese,  took  Urga,  the  capital  of  Mon- 
golia, drove  out  the  Chinese  troops  and  government  officials  and  in- 
stituted his  own  rule  over  the  Mongolians. 

He  displayed  there  a  savage,  inhuman  cruelty  in  his  dealings  with 
all  those  who  for  any  reason  whatsoever  arose  his  suspicion  or  whose 
ruin  could  enrich  him  or  his  satellites. 

Having  taken  firm  hold  in  Urga,  Ungern  mobilized  his  forces  and 
prepared  an  attack  against  the  Far  Eastern  Republic  from  the  west, 
thus  menacing  also  the  Russian  Soviet  Republic. 

He  started  his  advance  in  May.  Encouraged  by  the  success  in 
Vladivostok,  the  reactionary  groups,  which  were  serving  only  as  tools 
in  the  hands  of  foreign  intervention,  conceived  a  broad  plan  of  ag- 
gression against  the  Far  Eastern  Republic  aiming  at  the  total  de- 
struction of  the  democratic  state  organization  in  the  Far  East. 

Ungern  was  to  attack  the  Republic  from  the  west  to  cut  off  its 
communication  with  Soviet  Russia ;  Ataman  Semenov,  brought  by 
the  Japanese  from  Port  Arthur  to  Grodekovo,  was  forming  here 
his  forces  for  an  attack  against  Khabarovsk,  and  tried  at  the  same 
time  to  bring  about  a  revolt  of  the  Cossack  population  in  the  Amur 
region,  for  which  purpose  his  agents,  richly  supplied  with  Japanese 
money,  were  gathering  their  forces  on  Chinese  territory  on  the  right 
bank  of  the  Amur  River. 

Thus  the  Far  Eastern  Republic  was  to  be  attacked  from  all  sides. 

But  the  enterprise  did  not  succeed  as  smoothly  as  the  enemies  of 
the  republic  expected.  In  the  Maritime  Province  the  leaders  of  the 
reaction  quarreled  with  each  other  in  the  struggle  for  influence  and 
over  the  division  of  the  plundered  national  property.  Ataman  Seme- 
nov, whom  the  new  reactionary  government  of  the  Maritime  Prov- 
ince did  not  provide  with  any  money,  in  vain  complained  to  Gen- 
eral Tachibana,  commander  of  the  Japanese  expeditionary  forces, 
saying  that  he  is  being  prevented  from  accomplishing  the  great  work 

34 


of  crushing  the  popular  revolution  and  thus  strengthening  the  posi- 
tion of  the  Japanese  in  the  forthcoming  conflict  with  America. 

His  pitiful  detachments,  in  their  very  first  attempts  to  invade  the 
region  where  the  people's  revolutionary  army  was  stationed,  became 
aware  of  their  powerlessness  and  withdrew  under  the  protection  of 
the  interventionists. 

The  agents  of  Semenov  were  unsuccessful  in  their  attempts  to 
bring  about  a  revolt  on  the  Amur,  after  having  wasted  Japanese 
money. 

The  population  of  the  Amur  region  rallied  around  its  democratic 
popular  administration  and  even  the  wealthy  Cossack  population 
took  a  hostile  attitude  towards  this  adventure. 

Only  one  madman,  Ungern,  miscalculating  his  forces,  started  to 
advance  against  both  the  Far  Eastern  Republic  and  Soviet  Russia, 
under  the  watchword  of  re-establishing  the  monarchy. 

But  already  in  the  first  serious  battle,  at  the  city  of  Troitskosavsk, 
on  the  road  to  Verkhne-Udinsk,  at  the  end  of  June,  1921,  Ungern 
suffered  a  terrible  defeat  at  the  hands'  of  the  people's  revolutionary 
army.  And  he  succeeded  only  in  disgracing  himself  again  by  com- 
mitting new  bestialities  against  the  peaceful  peasant  population  of 
the  villages  which  he  met  on  his  way,  thus  arousing  immediately 
against  himself  a  general  partisan  warfare. 

In  July,  on  Mongolian  territory,  he  was  finally  routed;  on  July 
20,  Urga,  the  capital  of  Mongolia,  was  liberated  from  the  grip  of  the 
mad  Baron,  and  was  temporarily  occupied  by  the  united  forces  of 
the  Soviet  army  and  the  popular  revolutionary  army. 

Finally,  in  August,  Ungern,  who  like  Semenov,  had  in  Mongolia 
played  the  part  of  a  Japanese  mercenary,  abandoned  by  his  troops, 
which  dispersed  in  all  directions,  was  taken  prisoner  by  the  Red 
Soviet  army. 

The  advance  of  the  reactionary  adventurers  against  the  Republic 
ended  in  complete  failure.  The  republic  had  shown  its  force  and  its 
population  once  more  showed  its  attachment  to  the  revolution  and  to 
democratic  institutions. 

Besides  these  successes  in  the  open  struggle  against  the  enemies 
of  the  democratic  svstem,  there  was  no  interruption,  during  all  this 
time,  of  the  activities  within  the  republic,  undertaken  to  strengthen 
and  develop  the  democratic  order  and  the  institutions  of  the  re- 
public. 

Intensified  organic  activity  for  the  application  of  the  Constitution 
and  for  constructive  work  on  the  economic  and  administrative  field, 
followed  the  closing  of  the  Constituent  Assembly. 

Immediatelv  after  the  establishment  of  the  government  there  was 
formed  the  Council  of  Ministers,  which  according  to  the  Consti- 
tution is  responsible  to  the  Government  and  to  the  National  As- 
sembly. 

The  Council  of  Ministers  was  formed  on  a  coalition  basis  with 

35 


the  participation  of  the  opposition,  i.e.,  the  right  and  moderate  So- 
cialists. For  the  period  beginning  May  1  the  Council  of  Ministers 
elaborated  and  submitted  for  sanction  by  the  government  a  number 
of  very  important  laws  and  measures  referring  to  the  most  varied 
concerns  of  state  policy. 

Under  this  head  are  to  be  mentioned  the  laws  establishing  the 
functions  of  the  administrative  organs;  those  governing  the  elec- 
tions to  the  regional  Assemblies  of  Representatives  and  those  pro- 
viding for  the  people's  control,  regional  emissaries  and  local  autono- 
mous administrative  organs;  also  measures  covering  the  levying  and 
collection  of  taxes  and  the  regulation  of  the  financial  system,  among 
which  the  most  important  are  the  statutes  instituting  the  national, 
progressive  income  and  property  tax,  the  grain  tax,  the  tax  in  kind 
on  the  commercial  and  industrial  enterprises,  as  part  of  a  funda- 
mental industrial  tax;  regulations  governing  the  estimate  and  the 
records  of  general  state  revenues;  regulations  concerning  the  unity 
of  the  treasury. 

We  may  mention  further  statutes  regulating  the  economic  life, 
among  which  are  the  statutes  relating  to  the  private  gold  industry, 
the  government  commission  for  the  regulation  of  the  land-property 
relations  between  the  Buryat-Mongol  and  the  Russian  populations; 
the  separation  of  the  industrial  establishments  of  the  state,  as  a  sep- 
arate category  to  be  treated  according  to  particular  commercial  prin- 
ciples, and  the  elaboration  of  a  statute  concerning  the  granting  of  con- 
cessions on  the  territory  of  the  Far  Eastern  Republic  for  the  exploi- 
tation of  mineral  resources  and  forest  areas. 

In  consideration  of  the  extraordinary  political  events  in  the  Mari- 
time Province  a  special  law  was  issued,  prohibiting  arrangements  and 
agreements  with  the  insurgents  calling  themselves  "the  Pri-Amur 
(Merkulov)  Government,"  and  suspending  payments  to  the  treasury 
in  the  territory  occupied  by  the  insurgents. 

In  conclusion  are  to  be  mentioned  local  remedial  measures  such  as 
the  statute  covering  housing  needs  and  many  others. 

These  are  only  the  outstanding-  measures  of  the  legislation  en- 
dorsed by  the  government  of  the  Republic  in  the  period  that  elapsed 
since  the  adjournment  of  the  Constituent  Assemblv.  Among  the  ac- 
tivities of  the  central  government  organs,  the  bringing  about  of  order 
in  the  various  localities  was  also  included. 

Tn  the  regional  and  district  centers  there  were  organized  adminis- 
trative bodies ;  reforms  were  introduced  in  accordance  with  the  fun- 
damental statutes  of  the  Constitution  which  was  adopted  by  the  Con- 
stituent Assembly. 

The  most  important  manifestations  of  this  reorganization  of  the 
public  life  in  the  various  localities  were  the  elections  and  the  delib- 
erations of  the  regional  National  Assemblies  that  took  place  in  July 
and  August,  1921. 

Everywhere  the  elections  to   and   the   deliberations    of   the   As- 

36 


semblies  were  inspired  by  the  idea  of  strengthening  of  the  instituted 
democratic  order,  of  putting  into  effect  the  fundamental  laws  of  the 
Constituent  Assembly  governing  the  economic  reconstruction  of  the 
country. 

The  Popular  Assemblies  of  all  the  regions  expressed  their  readi- 
ness to  give  energetic  support  to  the  government,  and  announced 
again  their  urgent  protests  against  foreign  intervention  and  against 
the  support  given  by  foreign  armed  forces  to  the  criminal  aspira- 
tions of  the  reactionaries  to  destroy  the  unity  of  the  republic.  While 
in  that  part  of  the  republic  that  was  free  from  the  presence  of  the 
interventionist  troops,  the  constructive  work  and  the  strengthening 
of  the  basis  of  the  democratic  system  was  going  on  smoothly,  ac- 
companied by  the  establishment  of  complete  peace  and  order;  in 
those  parts  of  the  Maritime  Province  which  were  seized  by  the  re- 
actionaries almost  the  entire  population  of  the  occupied  territory 
started  an  active  struggle  against  the  usurpers. 

Again  there  began  the  partisan  movement  among  the  peasants, 
labor  strikes  and  protests  on  the  part  of  all  classes. 

The  reactionary  authorities  lost  their  heads  and  answered  with  a 
storm  of  bloody  repressions  and  atrocities. 

All  newspapers  which  were  not  favorable  to  the  administration 
were  suppressed,  among  them  even  the  organs  of  the  liberal  bour- 
geoisie. 

Numerous  arrests  forced  the  public  and  labor  organizations  under- 
ground. 

The  persecutions  of  the  political  opponents  revived  again  the  old 
bloody  methods  of  the  Ataman's  torture  chambers  and  a  number  of 
the  most  prominent  men,  active  in  the  public  life  of  Vladivostok, 
were  murdered  by  the  agents  of  the  reactionary  administration. 

This  policy  aroused  a  still  greater  manifestation  of  popular  indig- 
nation; the  activity  of  the  partisan  bands  increased  in  the  country, 
while  in  the  city  itself  a  new  outbreak  of  the  revolutionists  was  held 
back  only  by  the  pressure  of  the  Japanese  armed  forces  and  the  atti- 
tude of  the  Japanese  military  command,  which  after  having  called 
into  life  the  reactionary  government  and  after  having  at  the  time 
participated  in  the  overthrow  of  the  legitimate  democratic  administra- 
tion, declared  now  that  it  would  not  permit  of  any  disturbance  in  the 
region  in  which  its  troops  are  stationed. 

In  order  to  find  some  way  out  of  the  intolerable  situation  thus 
created  for  the  population  of  the  Maritime  Province  and  the  entire 
Republic,  a  situation  which  was  brought  about  by  foreign  interference 
in  the  internal  affairs  of  the  Republic,  the  Government  of  the  Far 
Eastern  Republic,  ready  to  explore  any  possibility  of  a  peaceful  is- 
sue, entered  peace  negotiations  with  the  representatives  of  the  Tokio 
government  and  agreed  to  conduct  these  negotiations  in  Deiren. 
These  negotiations  in  Deiren  constitute  another  effort  to  obtain 
through  peaceful  means,  directly  from  Japan,  the  cessation  of  mili- 

37 


tary  intervention  and  interference  in  its  internal  affairs,  i.e.,  the  re- 
moval of  the  main  obstacle  standing  in  the  way  of  consolidating  the 
unity  of  the  republic  and  of  firmly  establishing  its  democratic  order. 


Thus  we  may  end  the  present  outline  of  the  history  of  the  Far 
Eastern  Republic,  and  repeat  what  was  said  in  the  introduction  to 
this  outline — that  the  history  of  the  Far  Eastern  Republic  is  the 
history  of  the  heroic  efforts  of  a  part  of  the  Russian  people  to  de- 
fend its  independence,  and  its  right  to  exist  as  a  democratic  country, 
governed  in  the  interests  of  the  whole  population;  a  history  of  con- 
tinuous trials,  more  than  once  accompanied  by  the  bloodiest  and 
gravest  sacrifices;  of  the  people  of  a  small  country,  standing  face  to 
face  with  the  pretensions  and  the  brutal  policy  of  a  foreign  militar- 
ism whose  ways  of  frankly  trampling  under  its  feet  the  stipulations 
of  international  law  and  the  interests  of  weak  nations  are  hardly  sur- 
passed by  the  worst  forms  of  militarism  known  to  history. 

The  pages  of  this  history  are  full  of  the  sufferings  of  a  people 
compelled  under  unfavorable  circumstances  to  defend  itself  and  the 
cause  of  its  unity,  against  the  attacks  of  a  stronger  adversary. 

And  they  abound  in  such  incidents  as  the  burning  of  defenseless 
villages  and  towns,  the  deaths  of  mothers  and  children  in  the  flames 
of  their  dwellings,  set  on  fire  by  the  invaders,  the  throwing  of  the 
best  defenders  of  the  country's  independence  into  the  fur- 
naces of  locomotives.  They  are  marked  by  incredible  bestialities,  in- 
human pains  and  tortures  inflicted  upon  hundreds  of  people  who 
fell  into  the  hands  of  the  interventionists  or  their  Russian  hire- 
lings, by  cemeteries  of  death  and  horrors  around  the  torture  cham- 
bers instituted  by  the  tools  of  foreign  annexationists,  treacherous  at- 
tacks from  ambush,  the  assassination  of  truce  bearers,  whose  per- 
sons are  inviolable  by  immemorial  law. 

But  these  pages  are  also  full  of  heroic  courage,  of  unflinching  de- 
votion of  the  same  people,  displayed  in  the  defence  of  its  republic, 
of  its  unity  and  democratic  institutions. 

And  from  this  history  the  people  of  the  Far  Eastern  Republic 
draw  the  conviction  that  their  efforts  will  not  be  in  vain,  that  after 
all  the  time  will  come  when  they  will  be  liberated  from  the  bloody 
blight  of  armed  foreign  intervention,  when  they  will  be  in  a  position 
to  undertake  the  peaceful  economic  reconstruction  of  their  entire 
territory. 


38 


APPENDIX 


RESOLUTION  OF  THE  MARITIME  PROVINCIAL 
ZEMSTVO 

January  31st,  1920 

Resolution  regarding  the  temporary  assumption  of  full  power, 
within  the  limits  of  the  Maritime  Province,  by  the  Provincial 
Zemstvo  for  the  purpose  of  establishing  order. 

The  arrest  of  A.  Menshikov  and  S.  Afanasev,  members  of  the 
Maritime  Provincial  Zemstvo,  and  the  attempt  to  arrest  A. 
Medvedev,  the  Chairman,  and  A.  Rusanov,  the  Vice-Chairman, 
as  well  as  the  other  Zemstvo  workers  and  other  prominent  pub- 
lic men,  which  followed  immediately  after  the  action  of  the 
Eger  Battalion,  definitely  demonstrated  the  unvarying  politi- 
cal mode  of  action  of  the  fallen  Kolchak  Government.  The  dis- 
persal of  the  Siberian  territorial  Duma,  the  arrest  of  the  All- 
Russian  Directory,  the  murder  and  the  shooting  without  trial 
or  investigation  of  the  elected  representatives  of  the  people  and 
of  peaceful  citizens,  the  irresponsible  actions  of  the  military 
authorities,  the  militarization  of  the  civil  government  and  the 
systematic  violation  of  the  people's  rights,  were  characteristic 
features  of  the  fallen  government. 

Typical  of  this  policy,  was  the  destruction  of  the  local  institu- 
tions of  popular  government.  Elections  to  the  Zemstvos  were 
prevented.  The  old  provincial  rulers,  governors  and  governor- 
generals,  were  made  once  more  the  rulers  of  the  country.  The 
institution  of  appointed  overseers  for  the  peasants  was  resur- 
rected. The  militia  was  taken  from  the  jurisdiction  of  the  Zem- 
stvo and  city  governments,  and  Zemstvo  funds  were  confiscated. 
The  looting  of  the  Maritime  Provincial  Zemstvo  was  the  last 
act  of  this  system — the  irresponsible  military  dictatorship  in  our 
province. 

The  policies  of  the  Zemstvo  of  Siberia  and  particularly  of  the 
Maritime  Provincial  Zemstvo  were  discussed  on  many  occasions 
at  numerous  Zemstvo  and  public  meetings.  The  purpose  of  this 

39 


was  to  confirm  the  principle  of  popular  rule   throughout  the 
country. 

The  last  local  remnants  of  the  fallen  rule  of  Kolchak, 
while  falsely  declaring  in  favor  of  the  reestablishment  of  the  Vil- 
lage Zemstvo,  which  had  already  been  organized  by  popular 
decision,  are  trying  to  destroy  the  only  real  representative  gov- 
ernment engaged  in  the  defense  of  the  people's  interests,  having, 
by  the  arrest  of  their  members  already  destroyed  the  Provincial 
and  County  Zemstvos. 

That  local  government,  abandoned  even  by  its  own  military 
forces,  at  the  present  time  can  depend  only  on  an  insignificant 
group  of  armed  gangsters  and  can  resist  perhaps  jone  or  two  more 
outbreaks;  it  is  doomed  to  faliure  as  is  clearly  evident  from 
the  events  of  the  last  few  days. 

The  garrisons  of  Nikolsk-Usurisk  and  Vladivostok  expressed 
their  readiness  to  recognize  only  the  popular  governments  and 
have  organized  Revolutionary  Military  Staffs  in  order  to  aid  in 
establishing  them.  Several  public  organizations,  in  their  resolu- 
tions, also  definitely  declared  themselves  in  favor  of  a  tempor- 
ary assumption  of  government  power  by  the  Zemstvo  as  it  is 
under  the  present  conditions  the  only  government  institution 
elected  by  the  people.  Under  these  conditions  the  Maritime  Pro- 
vincial Zemstvo  as  an  institution  elected  by  the  population,  con- 
siders itself  compelled  to  adopt  immediately  all  measures  neces- 
sary for  the  organization  of  a  temporary  government  of  the  pro- 
vince, to  end  the  prevalent  anarchy  and  civil  war,  and  establish 
peace  among  the  people. 

Taking  into  consideration  all  the  above  stated  extraordinary 
circumstances,  the  Zemstvo  resolved :  to  aid  in  every  possible 
manner  in  ending  civil  war  in  the  provnce  and  in  establishing 
order  and  normal  conditions  of  life,  and  to  accomplish  this : 

1.  To  assume  temporarily  full  authority  within  the  entire 
Maritime  Province,  asking  the  friendly  cooperation  of  all  other 
institutions  of  popular  government  in  the  cities  and  counties,  and 
to  request  the  aid  of  all  local  government  officers. 

2.  To  issue  an  appeal  to  the  population  of  the  province. 

3.  To  inform  the  Allied  Command  of  the  above  decision. 

(Signed) 
A.  Medvedev,  Chairman  of  the  Zemstvo;    A.    Rusanov,    P. 
Popov,  S.  Afanasev,  A.  Menshikov,  Members  of  the  Zem- 
stvo; Belkin,  Secretary. 


DECLARATION  OF  THE  PROVISIONAL  ZEMSTVO 
GOVERNMENT  OF  THE  MARITIME  PROVINCE 

On  January  31,   1920,  under    the    pressure    of    the    unanimous 
opinion  of  the  military,  labor  and  civil  organizations  the  Mari- 

40 


time  Provincial  Zemstvo  assumed  all  governmental  powers 
within  the  limits  of  the  Maritime  Province. 

Upon  its  accession,  the  Provisional  Government,  during  the 
two  months  of  its  control  found  itself  supported  by  all  the  demo- 
cratic groups  as  well  as  by  the  toiling  masses  who  at  their 
numerous  conventions  reiterated  their  recognition  and  support 
of  the  Provisional  Government.  This  recognition  of  the  Pro- 
visional Government  came  not  only  from  the  population  of  the 
Maritime  Province,  but  also  from  the  Amur  Province  and  from 
the  Russian  population  living  within  the  zone  of  the  Chinese 
Eastern  Railroad  and  also  from  other  sections  of  the  Far  East. 

In  their  statements,  resolutions  and  memoranda,  the  great 
mass  of  the  toilers  of  the  Far  East  declared  their  unswerving 
loyalty  to  the  Provisional  Government  of  the  Maritime  Provin- 
cial Zemstvo  as  the  Provisional  Government  of  the  whole  Far 
East  in  order  to  achieve  the  settlement  of  national  problems,  and 
until  the  reunion  with  Central  Russia. 

Taking  into  consideration  this  tendency  of  the  toilers  of  the 
Far  East  and  in  obedience  to  their  will,  the  Provisional  Govern- 
ment of  the  Maritime  Provincial  Zemstvo  declares  that  from 
now  on  it  extends  its  authority  to  the  entire  territory  of  the  Far 
East — Maritime,  Amur,  Sakhalin  and  Kamchatka  Provinces,  as 
well  as  the  Russian  population  within  the  railroad  zone  of  the 
Chinese  Eastern  Railroad. 

Extending  its  authority  throughout  the  entire  territory  of  the 
Far  East,  the  Provincial  Government  finds  it  necessary  under 
these  conditions  to  summon  to  the  government,  with  full  repre- 
sentative rights,  delegates  from  the  conventions  of  the  toilers 
as  follows: 

Two  each  from  the  Maritime  and  Amur  Provinces. 

One  each  from  Kamchatka  and  Sakhalin. 

The  Provisional  Government  wishing  to  give  full  expression 
to  the  will  of  the  entire  population,  considers  it  its  duty  to  call 
within  the  nearest  future,  a  territorial  convention  of  toilers  for  the 
purpose  of  establishing  an  understanding  and  settlement  of  the 
national  problems  in  all  the  provinces  of  the  territory,  organiz- 
ing a  homogeneous  form  of  government,  and  strengthening  the 
ties  between  the  government  and  the  population. 

Reaffirming  its  previous  decision  to  make  its  principal  aim  in 
this  work  the  reerection  of  a  state  in  full  agreement  with  the 
will  of  the  toilers,  the  Provisional  Government  declares  that 
while  guarding  the  sovereign  rights  of  the  Russian  state,  it  will 
recognize  and  protect  the  legal  rights  of  foreign  citizens  in  the 
Far  East. 

The  Provisional  Zemstvo  Government  of  the  Maritime  Pro- 
vince. 

The  original  is  signed : 

41 


A.  Medvedev,  Chairman;  A.  Rusanov,  A.  Menshikov,  S. 
Afanasev,  P.  Popov,  Members;  S.  Belkin,  Secretary  of 
Provisional  Government. 


TO  THE  POPULATION  OF  PRIBAIKALIA 

The  overthrow  of  the  reactionary  forces  in  the  Pribaikal  dis- 
trict and  the  unfinished  struggle  with  the  remnants  of  the  de- 
feated Semenov  bands  have  put  before  the  whole  revolutionary 
democracy  the  task  of  establishing  a  local  people's  authority, 
capable  of  restoring  order  in  the  region  devastated  by  the  re- 
treating bands,  of  bringing  to  a  successful  issue  the  struggle  for 
the  liberation  of  Transbaikalia  and  the  restoration  of  the 
economic  life  of  the  region.  The  Provisional  Zemstvo  Govern- 
ment of  Pribaikalia  having  been  increased  by  representatives  of 
the  Socialist  parties,  the  Social  Democrats,  Social  Revolution- 
aries and  Communists,  by  representatives  of  the  trade  unions 
and  of  the  working  population,  has  set  itself  the  following  task: 

1.  To  protect  and  defend  the  interests  of  the  working  popu- 
lation of  Pribaikalia. 

2.  To  protect  the  country  from  any  foreign  infringement 
upon  its  rights. 

3.  To  continue  the  struggle  with  the  reactionary  forces  in 
the  East  until  they  are  crushed. 

Realizing  the  difficulties  which  stand  in  the  way  of  the  ac- 
complishment of  the  above  task  and  appealing  to  the  entire  work- 
ing population  for  actual  support,  the  Provisional  Zemstvo  Gov- 
ernment hereby  declares,  that  it  will  not  recede  from  its  pro- 
gram and  will  resolutely  suppress  all  separatist  attempts  and  all 
efforts  to  injure  its  authority. 

The  Provisional  Zemstvo  Government  believes  that  the  urban 
and  rural  working  population,  realizing  the  difficulty  of  the  pres- 
ent moment,  will  gather  its  strength  around  the  Provisional  Gov- 
ernment, to  assist  the  Government  in  its  struggle  for  the  inde- 
pendence of  the  district  against  domestic  and  foreign  reaction- 
aries, and  to  restore  the  economic  life  of  the  liberated  regions. 

THE  PROVISIONAL  ZEMSTVO, 
GOVERNMENT  OF  PRIBAIKALIA. 
March,  1920. 


DECLARATION 

of  the  Working  Population  of  the  Transbaikal  Region  to  the 
Governments  of  the  United  States  of  North  America,  Great 
Britain,  Japan,  China,  France,  Italy,  Russian  Socialist  Federated 
Soviet  Republic  and  all  Governments  and  Nations  of  the  World. 

42 


We,  the  empowered  representatives  of  all  the  people  of  the 
Transbaikal  territory,  in  Constituent  Convention  assembled,  at 
the  city  of  Verkhne-Udinsk,  address  ourselves  in  the  name  of  the 
people  who  elected  us,  to  all  the  nations  of  the  world  and  their 
governments  and  solemnly  declare : 

Two  years  of  internal  fratricidal  war  have  devastated  our 
rich  country  and  made  possible  the  re-establishment  of  reaction, 
hateful  to  the  people,  and  the  rule  of  the  robber-atamans  and 
their  hirelings.  A  black  cloud  of  violence,  robbery  and  murder 
oppressed  us,  the  whirr  of  knouts,  the  blaze  of  incendiary  fires, 
pitiless  executions  made  life  unbearable  to  us,  made  peaceful 
intercourse  with  our  neighbors  impossible  and  brought  upon  our 
territory  allied  occupation.  Our  people,  in  desperation,  rebelled, 
writing  on  their  banners — "the  end  of  civil  war"  and  "the  union 
of  all  the  people  for  liberty  and  peace." 

Having  overthrown  the  Government  of  the  usurpers  Kol- 
chak  and  Semenov,  the  people  of  the  Transbaikal  territory, 
through  its  representatives,  proclaim : 

1.  The  Far  Eastern  territories,  including  the  territories  of 
Transbaikalia,  Amur,  Maritime  Province,  Sakhalin,  Kamchatka 
and  the  Right  of  Way  of  the  Chinese  Eastern  Railway,  due  to 
their  geographical  and  economic  situation,  their  extended  fron- 
tier line,  remoteness  from  the  political  center  of  the  Russian 
Republic,  are  hereby  proclaimed  an  Independent  State  under  a 
Republican  form  of  government. 

2.  Upon  the  territory  of  the  Far  Eastern  Republic  shall  be 
established  a  democratic  Government,  representing  the  will  of 
the  whole  people,  as  expressed  through  its  duly  elected  repre- 
sentatives and  guaranteeing  to  all  the  classes  of  society  the  demo- 
cratic liberties  which  are  the  safeguards  of  peaceful  development 
of  social  forces. 

3.  In  order  to  accomplish  its  aims  the  Convention  elects  from 
its  midst  a  Provisional  Government  in  which  shall  participate 
representatives  of  all  political  parties  and  nationalities,  resid- 
ing in  the  territory  of  the  Republic.  To  this  Government  the  Con- 
vention delegates  full  political  and  military  authority  and  em- 
powers it  to  continue  relentlessly  the  fight  against  the  last 
remnants  of  reactionary  administration,  to  establish  the  rule  of 
law  and  order,  to  organize  local  democratic  governments,  to 
draft  a  law  and  prepare  for  the  convocation  of  a  general  Con- 
stituted Assembly  for  the  purpose  of  laying  down  the  funda- 
mental law  and  working  out  the  Constitution  of  the  Far  Eastern 
Republic,  to  convene  as  soon  as  all  the  territories  are  reunited. 

4.  The  Convention  urgently  appeals  to  all  the  officers  and 
soldiers  of  the  former  army  of  Kolchak  and  Semenov  to  put  an 
end  to  the  rule  of  violence  and  lawlessness,  to  lay  down  their 
arms,  guaranteeing  them,  in  the  name  of  the  people,  complete 

43 


safety  and  the  opportunity  of  returning  to  their  homes  and  peace- 
ful labor.  The  Convention  hereby  proclaims  the  abolition  of 
capital  punishment  as  being  in  contradiction  to  the  aspirations  of 
our  people. 

5.  Addressing  itself  to  the  nations  of  the  World  through 
their  Governments,  the  Convention  declares  that  the  Far  Eastern 
Republic  aspires  to  establish  friendly  relations  with  all  countries, 
especially  with  those  that  lie  on  its  frontier  and  the  citizens  of 
which  live  in  great  numbers  upon  its  territory.  The  internal  war 
has  shaken  our  economic  life  to  its  very  foundation,  has  ruined 
our  industry  and  transportation  and  has  brought  the  spectre  of 
starvation  before  our  eyes.  Our  aim  is  peace,  peaceful  labor  and 
friendly  relations  toward  all  people,  and  the  reconstruction  of  our 
life  upon  the  foundation  of  democratic  order.  Guaranteeing  to 
all  the  citizens  of  foreign  countries  the  full  right  of  personal 
safety  and  property,  the  Convention  invites  all  Governments  to 
enter  into  relations  witii  our  newly  elected  Government  by  send- 
ing their  official  representatives  for  the  purpose  of  co-operating 
in  the  interests  of  peace,  assuring  them  that  all  of  the  people 
of  our  territory  will  uphold  the  Government  in  its  work  of 
establishing  order  and  creating  conditions  favorable  for  peaceful 
creative  life  and  labor. 

April  6,  1920. 

PRESIDIUM 
Constituent  Convention 


COMMUNICATION  OF  THE  RUSSIAN  SOVIET 
GOVERNMENT 

Mr.  Krasnoshchekov, 

Minister  of  Foreign  Affairs  of  the  Far  Eastern  Republic. 

On  behalf  of  the  Government  of  the  Russian  Socialist  Feder- 
ated Soviet  Republic,  I  have  the  honor  to  inform  you  that,  taking 
into  consideration  the  declaration  of  the  Provisional  Govern- 
ment of  the  Far  Eastern  Republic  with  regard  to  the  formation 
of  an  independent  democratic  republic  on  the  basis  stated  in  the 
said  declaration,  the  Russian  Socialist  Federated  Soviet  Repub- 
lic hereby  recognizes  the  establishment  of  the  said  democratic 
Republic  with  the  Provisional  Government  at  its  head. 

The  Soviet  Government  is  ready  to  enter  immediately  into 
official  diplomatic  relations  with  the  Government  of  the  new 
Republic  in  order  to  conclude  commercial  and  political  agree- 
ments. 

In  communicating  the  foreging  to  you,  I  consider  it  my  duty 
on  behalf  of  the  Russian  Socialist  Federated  Soviet  Republic 
to  express  my  desires  to  see  the  Far  Eastern  Republic  prosper- 
ous and  at  peace  with  the  neighboring  countries. 

(Signed)     Chicherin, 
People's  Commissar  for  Foreign  Affairs. 

Moscow,  May  14,  1920. 

44 


DECLARATION     OF     THE     CONFERENCE     OF     THE 
UNITED  PROVINCES  OF  THE  RUSSIAN  FAR  EAST 

We,  the  delegated  representatives  of  all  the  people  and  of  all 
the  provinces  of  the  Russian  Far  East,  in  the  name  of  the 
people  who  elected  us,  solemnly  declare : 

Two  years  of  internal  fratricidal  war  have  devastated  our 
rich  country  and  made  possible  the  re-establishment  of  re- 
action, hateful  to  the  people,  in  the  rule  of  the  robber  atamans 
and  their  hirelings.  A  black  cloud  of  violence,  robbery  and 
murder  oppressed  us,  the  whirr  of  knouts,  the  blaze  of  in- 
cendiary fires,  pitiless  executions  made  life  unbearable  to  us, 
made  peaceful  intercourse  with  our  neighbors  impossible  and 
brought  upon  our  territory  allied  intervention.  Our  people,  in 
desperation,  rebelled,  writing  on  their  banners — "the  end  of 
civil  war"  and  "the  union  of  all  the  people  for  liberty  and  peace." 

Having  liberated  the  whole  of  the  Russian  Far  East,  the 
people  through  their  representatives  proclaim : 

1.  The  entire  territory  of  the  former  Russian  Empire  east  of 
the  River  Selenga  and  Lake  Baikal,  including  Western  Trans- 
baikalia, Eastern  Transbaikalia,  the  Amur  Region,  the  Maritime 
Province,  Sakhalin  and  Kamchatka,  shall  be  declared  an  inde- 
pendent Republic,  from  the  date  of  the  publication  of  the  declara- 
tion of  independence  of  6th  April. 

2.  The  border  between  the  Russian  Socialist  Federated 
Soviet  Republic  and  the  Far  Eastern  Republic  shall  be:  The 
River  Selenga  from  its  exit  from  Mongolia  to  its  mouth,  the 
middle  of  Lake  Baikal,  and  the  former  border  of  the  Yakutsk 
Province  to  the  east  and  north  to  the  Arctic  Ocean. 

3.  The  Far  Eastern  Republic  inherits  all  the  rights  of  the 
former  Russian  Empire  in  the  zone  of  the  Chinese  Eastern 
Railway. 

4.  A  democratic  Government  shall  be  established  in  the  terri- 
tory of  the  Far  Eastern  Republic,  representing  the  will  of  the 
whole  people,  and  expressed  through  their  duly  elected  repre- 
sentatives. 

5.  All  the  armed  forces  of  the  country  and  every  province 
shall  be  subordinated  to  the  command  of  the  Central  Govern- 
ment. 

6.  All  the  officers  and  soldiers  of  the  remnants  of  the  armies 
of  Kolchak,  Kappel  and  Semenov  are  guaranteed  personal 
safety  and  the  opportunity  of  returning  to  their  homes  and 
peaceful  labor. 

7.  In  order  to  work  out  the  fundamental  laws  of  the  country, 
a  Constituent  Assembly  shall  be  convoked  in  the  very  near 
future,  in  accordance  with  the  law  which  shall  be  worked  out 
by  the  Conference  and  based  on  the  principle  of  proportional 

45 


representation,  by  universal,  equal,  secret  and  direct  vote,  with- 
out distinction  of  sex  and  religion. 

8.  In  order  to  accomplish  its  aim  the  Conference  elects  from 
its  midst  a  Government  of  the  Far  Eastern  Republic  to  whom  it 
delegates  full  political  and  military  authority.  This  Government 
shall  exist  until  the  convocation  of  the  Constituent  Assembly  of 
the  Far  Eastern  Republic,  and  shall  be  guided  by  democratic 
principles.  All  liberties  which  are  the  safeguards  of  peaceful 
development  of  social  order  shall  be  maintained,  the  institution 
of  private  property  preserved,  but  the  Government  shall  make 
such  changes  as  are  necessary  for  the  protection  of  labor,  as 
shown  from  the  experience  of  other  civilized  nations. 

From  the  date  of  the  election  of  the  new  Government  by 
the  Conference  all  the  other  Provisional  Governments  in  the 
Russian  Far  East  shall  be  deprived  of  their  state  prerogatives 
and  shall  become  local  administrative  bodies,  pending  the  election 
of  such  bodies. 

Addressing  itself  to  the  nations  of  the  world  through  their 
Governments,  the  Conference  declares  that  the  Far  Eastern  Re- 
public aspires  to  establish  friendly  relations  with  all  countries, 
especially  with  those  bordering  on  it  and  whose  citizens  reside 
in  the  territory  of  the  Far  Eastern  Republic.  The  internal  strife 
has  shaken  our  economic  life,  has  ruined  our  industry  and  trans- 
portation and  has  brought  the  spectre  of  starvation  before  our 
eyes.  Our  aim  is  peace  and  peaceful  labor.  In  close  co-opera- 
tion with  other  nations  we  want  to  reconstruct  our  life  on 
democratic  bases.  Guaranteeing  to  all  foreign  citizens  full 
inviolability  of  person  and  property,  the  Conference  invites  all 
Governments  to  enter  into  relations  with  the  Government  of  the 
Far  Eastern  Republic  and  to  send  their  authorized  representa- 
tives in  order  to  establish  mutual  relations  in  the  interests  of 
peace,  and  it  desires  to  assure  them  that  the  people  of  the  terri- 
tory wholly  support  the  Government  in  its  ceaseless  efforts  to 
establish  order  and  create  conditions  favorable  to  peaceful  life 
and  labor. 

9th  November,  1920. 


A  RESOLUTION  OF  THE  MARITIME  ZEMSTVO  BOARD 

"The  Zemstvo  Board,  mindful  that  it  assumed  State  author- 
ity in  the  province  pending  the  expression  of  the  will  of  the 
entire  population  of  the  province,  declares  that  the  time  has  now 
come  when  it  not  only  may,  but  must,  in  accordance  with  the 
law,  resign  its  State  authority,  and  transfer  it  to  the  Central 
Government.  The  Zemstvo  Board  has  therefore  decided :  to 
consider  its  sovereign  authority  in  the  Far  Eastern  Republic  as 
terminated,  and  from  this  date  to  commence  the  performance 

46 


of  its  direct  duties  in  the  capacity  of  the  Provincial  Zemstvo 
administration." 

Medvediev,  Chairman. 

Russanov,  Popov,  Members. 
Vladivostok,  12th  November,  1920. 


A  RESOLUTION  OF  THE  GOVERNMENT  OF  THE  FAR 
EASTERN  REPUBLIC 

Concerning  the  date  of  the  convocation  of  the  Constituent  As- 
sembly of  the  Far  Eastern  Republic  and  concerning  the  date  of 
the  elections. 

In  accordance  with  the  recommendation  of  the  Commission 
for  the  Elections  to  the  Constituent  Assembly  of  the  Far  Eastern 
Republic,  the  Government  has  decided: 

1.  That  the  25th  of  January,  1921,  be  appointed  the  date  for 
the  convocation  of  the  Constituent  Assembly  of  the  Far  Eastern 
Republic. 

2.  That  the  elections  for  the  Constituent  Assembly  take  place 
on  the  9th  of  January,  1921. 

3.  That  the  present  regulation  be  ordered  into  effect  by  tele- 
graph immediately. 

12th  December,  1920. 


AN  AGREEMENT  WITH  REGARD  TO  THE  FRONTIERS 
BETWEEN  THE  RUSSIAN  SOCIALIST  FEDER- 
ATED SOVIET  REPUBLIC  AND  THE  FAR 
EASTERN    REPUBLIC 

The  Russian  Socialist  Federated  Soviet  Republic,  the  party 
of  the  one  side,  and  the  Far  Eastern  Republic,  the  party  of  the 
other  side,  considering  it  necessary  to  determine  definitely  the 
boundaries  of  the  two  parties,  have  decided  to  conclude  the 
present  agreement,  for  which  purpose  the  Council  of  People's 
Commissars  of  the  Russian  Socialist  Federated  Soviet  Re- 
public has  appointed  L.  I.  Karahan,  the  Acting  People's  Com- 
missar for  Foreign  Affairs,  as  its  representative,  and  the  Govern- 
ment of  the  Far  Eastern  Republic  has  appointed  Mr.  A.  M. 
Krasnoshchekov,  the  Minister  for  Foreign  Affairs,  as  its  repre- 
sentative. The  said  representatives  after  having  mutually  pre- 
sented to  each  other  their  credentials  and  having  found  them  in 
good  order  and  legally  executed,  agree  to  the  following: 

Article  first  and  the  only  one.  The  border  between  the 
Russian  Socialist  Federated  Soviet  Republic  and  the  Far  East- 
ern Republic:  Beginning  at  the  point  where  the  River  Selenga 
crosses  the  Mongolian  frontier,  proceeds  down  the  river  to  the 

47 


admistrative  border  between  the  Verkhne-Udinsk  and  Seleginsk 
Counties,  follows  that  border,  and  then  the  border  between  the 
Seleginsk  and  Barguzinsk  Counties  to  Lake  Baikal.  It  divides 
equally  Lake  Baikal,  runs  along  the  former  border  of  the  Prov- 
ince of  Irkutsk  and  the  Province  of  Transbaikalia  to  the  north- 
ern part  of  Lake  Baikal,  and  then  to  the  border  of  the  Province  of 
Yakutsk  and  the  borders  of  Transbaikalia,  the  Amur  District  and 
the  Maritime  Province,  to  the  watershed  between  the  Rivers 
Kiran  and  Pesmun  and  the  watershed  of  the  said  rivers  to  the 
Okhotsk  Sea  at  Cape  Medjelnd.  All  the  islands  of  the  Okhotsk- 
Sea  south  of  the  said  cape,  including  the  northern  part  of  Sak- 
halin, belong  to  the  Far  Eastern  Republic. 

Note :  The  frontiers  of  the  two  countries  shall  be  demarked 
and  boundary  posts  shall  be  erected  by  a  joint  commission  of  the 
two  Republics,  having  an  equal  number  of  members.  When  the 
frontier  line  passes  through  rivers  and  lakes,  it  shall  coincide 
with  the  middle  of  the  navigable  part  of  these  rivers  and  lakes. 

The  present  agreement  becomes  valid  from  the  date  of  its 
signature. 

In  witness  whereof  the  representatives  of  the  two  countries 
have  signed  the  present  agreement  and  have  attached  their 
respective  seals. 

Executed  in  two  copies.     Moscow,  December  15,  1920. 

(Signed)    L.   I.   Karahan. 
Acting  People's  Commissar  for  Foreign  Affairs. 
Chita,  30th  December,  1920. 

(Signed)     A.  Krasnoshchekow, 

Minister  of  Foreign  Affairs. 

Approved  by  the  Government  of  the  Far  Eastern  Republic 
on  the  24th  of  January,  1921. 


A  RESOLUTION  OF  THE  GOVERNMENT  OF  THE  FAR 

EASTERN  REPUBLIC 
Announcing  the  date  for  the  opening  of  the  Constituent  As- 
sembly of  the  Far  Eastern  Republic. 

THE  GOVERNMENT  HAS  DECIDED: 

1.  To  convene  the  Constituent  Assembly  of  the  Far  Eastern 
Republic  on  the  12th  day  of  February,  at  6  o'clock  in  the  evening. 

2.  To  proclaim  the  day  of  the  opening  of  the  Constituent 
Assembly  a  national  holiday. 

3.  To  order  the  present  regulations  into  immediate  effect  by 
telegraph. 

Krasnoshchekov, 
President  of  the  Government. 
P.  Fedorez, 
Director  of  Affairs  of  the  Government. 
Chita,  February  8,  1921. 

48 


DECLARATION    OF   THE    CONSTITUENT    ASSEMBLY 
OP  THE  FAR  EASTERN  REPUBLIC. 

The  two  and  a  half  years  of  heroic  struggle  by  the  revolu- 
tionary people  of  the  Russian  Far  East  against  the  hated  regime 
of  the  usurping  Atamans  and  their  henchmen  has  ended  in  a 
complete  victory.  Owing  to  the  international  situation  and  with 
a  view  to  preventing  the  Far  East  from  becoming  a  permanent 
base  of  warfare  against  Soviet  Russia,  the  people  of  the  Russian 
Far  East  have  given  up  their  sacred  wish  of  an  immediate  re- 
union with  their  mother  country,  Russia,  and  have  entered  upon 
the  course  of  establishing  an  independent  sovereign  republic  on 
the  territory  of  the  Russian  Far  East.  The  independence  of  this 
republic  was  recognized  by  the  Socialist  Federated  Soviet  Re- 
public of  Russia  in  its  declaration  of  May  14,  1920. 

To  form  a  government  and  to  enact  the  fundamental  laws 
of  the  Republic,  the  Constituent  Assembly  was  elected  by  the 
free  will  of  the  people  of  the  Far  Eastern  Republic,  expressed 
by  universal,  equal,  direct  and  secret  ballot  and  by  proportional 
representation  with  no  distinction  of  nationality,  sex  or  religion. 

Considering  the  creation  of  such  a  government  as  will  se- 
cure the  full  rights  of  the  people  by  promoting  stability  and 
complete  freedom  of  creative  initiative  of  all  citizens  in  the  ter- 
ritory of  the  Far  Eastern  Republic,  to  be  its  solemn  task,  the 
Constituent  Assembly  hereby  solemnly  declares  to  the  entire 
world  that : 

1.  The  whole  of  the  territory  of  the  former  Empire  of  Russia, 
east  of  the  River  Selenga  and  Lake  Baikal  to  the  Pacific  Ocean, 
including  the  provinces  of  Pribaikalia,  Transbaikalia,  the  Amur 
and  Priamur  regions  and  the  Maritime  Province,  and  the  north- 
ern part  of  Sakhalin  Island,  is  hereby  declared  under  the  juris- 
diction of  the  independent  sovereign,  democratic  State,  the  Far 
Eastern  Republic. 

2.  By  virtue  of  an  agreement  the  demarcation  line  between 
the  Soviet  Republic  of  Russia  and  the  Far  Eastern  Republic  is 
drawn  as  follows: 

From  the  River  Selenga  from  its  exit  from  Mongolia  to  the 
administrative  boundary  of  the  former  Selenginsk,  Barguzinsk 
and  Verkhne-Udinsk  counties,  following  the  boundary  of  those 
counties  to  Lake  Baikal,  along  the  old  boundary  between  the 
Yakutsk,  Transbaikal  and  Amur  districts  to  the  watershed  be- 
tween the  Rivers  Kiran  and  Pesmun,  along  the  watershed  of 
these  rivers  to  the  shores  of  the  Okhotsk  Sea  at  Cape  Mejelnd, 
including  all  the  islands  south  of  the  Cape  Mejelnd. 

3.  The  sole  masters  exercising  the  sovereign  rights  within 
this  territory  are  the  people  who  inhabit  it  and  consequently 
the  presence  of  any  armed  force  of  a  foreign  power  in  their  ter- 
ritory, or  interference  by  a  foreign  power  with  the  internal 

49 


affairs  of  the  country  is  not  only  regarded  as  an  encroachment 
upon  the  rights  of  the  Russian  people  in  the  Far  East,  but  as  an 
act  of  gross  violence  and  usurpation,  and  as  a  violation  of  fun- 
damental international  rights. 

4.  All  the  treaty  rights  of  the  former  Empire  of  Russia  in  the 
leased  territory  of  the  Chinese  Eastern  Railway  revert  to  the 
Government  of  the  Far  Eastern  Republic  and  are,  therefore,  sub- 
ject to  revision  conjointly  by  the  Governments  of  the  Far  East- 
ern Republic,  the  Socialist  Federated  Soviet  Republic  of  Russia 
and  the  Republic  of  China. 

5.  Hereafter  the  supreme  power  in  the  territory  of  the  Far 
Eastern  Republic  belongs  to  the  people  and  no  one  else. 

6.  The  form  of  Government,  the  foundation  of  which  the 
Constituent  Assembly  has  been  called  to  lay,  will  rest  on  the 
principles  of  real  democracy  and  self-government,  ensuring  the 
sovereignty  of  the  entire  population  and  the  irrevocable  rights 
of  the  toiling  majority  whose  will  has  been  expressed  directly 
through  their  representatives  elected  according  to  the  principle 
of  universal,  direct,  equal  and  secret  ballot  and  with  due  consid- 
eration to  the  principle  of  proportional  representation  and  guar- 
anteeing the  rights  of  the  minority. 

7.  Considering  the  independent  self-assertion  of  the  com- 
munity and  the  free  expression  of  initiative  whether  by  indi- 
viduals or  groups  as  a  necessary  condition  of  the  development 
of  the  country,  the  Constituent  Assembly,  by  abolishing  all  class 
distinctions  and  privileges,  guarantees  full  political  freedom  to 
the  population,  such  as  inviolability  of  person,  freedom  of  speech 
and  press,  of  assembly,  the  right  to  organize  and  to  strike,  freedom 
of  conscience  and  movement. 

8.  Corporal  and  capital  punishment,  the  relics  of  the  old  re- 
gime, are  hereby  abolished. 

9.  Having  set  upon  the  peaceful  reconstruction  of  the  eco- 
nomic and  political  life  of  the  country,  the  Constituent  Assembly 
declares  civil  strife  at  an  end  and  that  all  political  offences  art 
pardoned  by  a  decree  of  amnesty  which  the  Constituent  Assembh 
is  proceeding  to  issue  without  delay. 

10.  The  institution  of  private  ownership  remains  untouched, 
the  Government  guaranteeing  full  liberty  to  all  citizens  of  the 
Republic  and  to  the  citizens  of  foreign  countries  who  may  come 
to  live  there.  The  limitation  of  the  rights  of  private  property 
may  be  extended  only  in  the  interest  of  the  general  public  and 
only  in  cases  provided  by  law. 

11.  Land  being  the  vital  possession  of  the  entire  population, 
the  natural  resources  of  land  and  water  are  hereby  declared 
the  property  of  the  people  and  therefore  cannot  become  private 
property.  Pursuing  the  economic  policy  of  the  open  door  and 
equal  opportunities  for  foreign  industry  and  trade,  and  endeav- 
oring to  resume  economic  relations  with  other  nations  on  a  basis 

50 


of  mutual  exchange,  the  Government  of  the  Far  Eastern  Re- 
public will  take  every  possible  measure  to  attract  foreign  capital 
and  foreign  initiative  to  the  development  of  the  natural  resources 
of  the  country,  without  violating  the  sovereign  rights  of  the 
people  of  the  Russian  Far  East  and  the  laws  for  the  preservation 
of  the  rights  of  the  workmen. 

12.  All  small  indigenous  nationalities  and  national  minorities 
in  the  territory  of  the  Far  Eastern  Republic  are  hereby  granted 
the  right  of  autonomy  which  is  considered  as  a  necessary  meas- 
ure for  the  independent  development  of  their  national  individu- 
ality. 

Firmly  insisting  upon  their  sovereign  rights  and  incessantly 
endeavoring  to  re-establish  peaceful  conditions  in  their  country, 
the  people  of  the  Far  Eastern  Republic  will  build  their  relations 
with  neighboring  nations  upon  the  foundation  of  mutual  under- 
standing and  respect,  confidence  and  peaceful  co-operation. 

The  Constituent  Assembly  continues  its  task,  with  the  belief 
in  the  creative  power  of  the  revolutionary  people  of  the  Far 
East,  and  in  their  readiness  to  defend  their  rights  and  their 
peaceful  labor. 

The  Constituent  Assembly  of  the  Far  Eastern  Republic. 
April,  1921. 

TO  ALL  THE  GOVERNMENTS  AND  NATIONS  OF  THE 
*  WORLD 

In  the  name  of  the  people  who  electfed  us,  we,  the  represen- 
tatives of  the  Russian  Far  Eastern  provinces,  from  Lake  Baikal 
to  the  Pacific  Ocean,  make  the  following  appeal  to  all  the 
governments  and  nations  of  the  world : 

For  more  than  two  and  a  half  years  the  Russian  Far  East 
has  felt  the  pressure  of  foreign  intervention.  For  more  than 
two  and  a  half  years  the  Russian  Far  East  has  been  torn  asunder 
by  internal  struggle,  a  struggle  of  the  people  with  the  remnants 
of  the  old  regime  and  the  counter-revolutionary  bands  that 
attempted  to  enslave  the  people  again  after  they  had  with  the 
greatest  difficulty  broken  their  fetters. 

But  the  hardships  the  people  of  the  Russian  Far  East  were 
forced  to  endure,  convinced  them  that  unless  they  united,  their 
welfare  would  not  be  established  nor  protected. 

Regardless  of  the.  obstacles  which  the  people  of  the  Russian 
Far  East  have  met  in  their  way,  obstacles  not  so  numerous  from 
within  as  from  outside  the  country,  the  people  have  achieved 
their  union. 

The  Constituent  Assembly  which,  elected  on  the  prin- 
of  universal  suffrage,  has  now  been  convened  at  Chita,  is  the 
great  symbol  of  that  union. 

The  Constituent  Assembly  has  approved  the  union  of  the 

51 


Russian  Far  Eastern  provinces,  that  have  always  been  a  part  of 
the  Russian  Empire,  as  well  as  the  establishment  of  a  united 
Far  Eastern  Republic,  which  has  laid  as  the  foundation  of  its 
existence  the  principles  of  democracy,  civil  liberties  and  the 
preservation  of  private  property,  both  Russian  and  foreign.  The 
Moscow  Government  has  expressed  its  approval  of  the  formation 
of  the  Far  Eastern  Republic. 

The  united  people  of  the  Russian  Far  East  have  now  a  wide 
field  of  activity  in  their  free  and  independent  Republic. 

But  for  the  success  of  the  young  Republic,  certain  prelim- 
inary conditions  must  be  established,  without  which  the  efforts  of 
the  people  may  be  in  vain. 

1.  It  is  necessary  that  the  Far  Eastern  Republic  should  be 
accepted  in  the  family  of  independent  nations,  as  one  of  its  duly 
recognized  members. 

2.  It  is  necessary  that  the  territory  of  the  Far  Eastern  Re- 
public should  be  freed  from  foreign  troops  and  foreign  inter- 
ference. 

The  Constituent  Assembly  believes  that  the  Governments 
and  their  peoples,  in  the  name  of  justice  and  in  the  interests  of 
peace,  will  respond  to  the  appeal  of  the  representatives  of  the 
Russian  Far  East  and  will  assist  the  fully  empowered  Govern- 
ment in  creating  conditions  favorable  for  peaceful  labor  and 
commercial  intercourse  with  other  nations,  by  according  recog- 
nition and  by  establishing  normal  relations  with  the  Far  Eastern 
Republic. 

Chairman  of  the  Constituent  Assembly. 

Secretary  of  the  Constituent  Assembly. 
Chita,  April,  1921. 

THE  NOTE  ADDRESSED  BY  THE  CONSTITUENT  AS- 
SEMBLY  OF  THE  FAR  EASTERN  REPUBLIC  TO 
THE  PEOPLE  AND  GOVERNMENT  OF  CHINA 

The  people  of  the  Russian  Far  East  have  after  long  efforts 
overcome  the  intrigues  of  the  enemies  of  democracy  and  have 
accomplished  the  union  of  the  Far  Eastern  Provinces.  Through 
the  duly  elected  representatives  in  the  Constituent  Assembly 
they  have  now  taken  their  fate  into  their  own  hands.  To  the 
people  of  the  Russian  Far  East  who  have  suffered  much  in  their 
struggle  for  freedom,  the  present  moment  is  one  of  triumph 
which  can  be  fully  understood  only  by  a  nation  beginning  a  new, 
free  and  independent  life.  In  this  joyful  and  solemn  moment  we 
involuntarily  turn  to  our  old  and  tried  friends,  the  people  of 
China  and  their  chosen  representatives.  Great  China,  which  is 
herself  experiencing  many  shocks  in  her  struggle  for  national 
unity,  can  understand  the  joy  of  the  united  people  of  the  Rus- 
sian Far  East  and  can  appreciate  the  sincere  friendship  and  sym- 

52 


pathy  of  the  Constituent  Assembly  towards  the  Chinese  people 
in  their  efforts  to  bring  about  the  union  of  the  country  and  to 
defend  their  national  independence. 

China  and  Russia  have  had  a  common  frontier  stretching  for 
several  thousand  miles.  To  the  Far  Eastern  Republic  a  consid- 
erable part  of  this  common  frontier  has  devolved.  It  is  natural 
that  disorders  on  one  side  of  this  border  line  are  immediately 
felt  on  the  other.  For  this  reason  China  disarmed  the  bands  of 
Semenov  for  the  protection  of  her  own  interests.  This  is  signifi- 
cantly demonstrated  by  the  presence  of  the  counter-revolution- 
ary bands  of  Ungern  in  the  territory  of  China.  Were  the 
relations  of  the  two  Republics  defined,  the  Chinese  people  and 
their  Government  would  not  be  liable  to  suffer  injury  from  the 
counter-revolutionary  bandits  who  have  forced  their  way  into 
the  territory  of  China.  The  people  and  the  Government  of  the 
Far  Eastern  Republic  could,  acting  under  an  agreement  with 
China,  easily  find  means  for  co-operation  in  the  removal  of  the 
common  danger.  The  free  people  of  the  Far  Eastern  Republic 
are  endeavoring  to  establish  and  strengthen  the  friendly,  neigh- 
borly relations  on  a  sound  basis  of  mutual  esteem,  justice  and 
welfare.  The  Far  Eastern  Republic  and  China  have  a  vital  com- 
mon interest  in  the  defence  of  their  indpendence  against 
aggression  and  in  the  development  of  their  commercial  inter- 
course. 

The  Constituent  Assembly  hereby  solemnly  declares  that 
aggressive  designs  and  racial  prejudice  are  alike  foreign  to  the 
ideas  of  the  Russian  Far  East.  Considering  the  former  Russo- 
Chinese  relations  and  that  the  policy  of  the  Russian  Imperial 
Government  tended  to  encroach  upon  China's  sovereign  rights, 
the  Constituent  Assembly  is  ready  to  reconsider  all  treaties  con- 
cluded in  the  past,  including  those  relating  to  the  Chinese  East- 
ern Railway,  on  a  basis  of  equality  to  China  and  the  Far  Eastern 
Republic.  The  Russian  people  desire  the  establishment  of  diplo- 
matic relations  which  will  enable  the  people  of  China  and  the  Far 
Eastern  Republic  to  resume  commercial  intercourse,  thus  increas- 
ing the  prosperity  of  both  nations.  Having  adopted  a  new 
creative  policy  of  sincere  intercourse  with  all  nations  and  their 
governments,  the  Constituent  Assembly  requests  the  Govern- 
ment of  the  Republic  of  China  to  accord  the  Far  Eastern  Re- 
public due  recognition  and  to  establish  with  it  official  relations. 

The  Constituent  Assembly  of  the  Far  Eastern  Republic. 


TO  THE  IMPERIAL  JAPANESE  GOVERNMENT 

In  the  early  part  of  August,  1918,  the  Japanese  Imperial 
Government  issued  a  declaration  to  the  Russian  people  in  which 
it  was  said :  "The  Government  of  the  United  States  recognizing 
the  seriousness  of  the  situation,  has  lately  addressed  the  Japan  - 

53 


ese  Government  asking  it  for  a  prompt  despatch  of  troops  in  order 
to  relieve  the  position  of  the  Czecho-Slovak  forces.  In  order  to 
meet  the  wishes  of  the  American  Government  and  to  co-operate 
with  the  Allies  in  this  expedition,  the  Japanese  Government  has 
decided  to  make  immediate  preparations  for  the  despatch  of  the 
necessary  troops.  A  detachment  of  troops  will  be  immediately 
sent  to  Vladivostok.  Although  choosing  this  course  of  action, 
the  Japanese  Government,  nevertheless,  remains  firm  in  its  desire 
to  maintain  its  friendly  relations  with  Russia  and  her  people,  and 
confirms  the  declaration  of  its  policy  to  respect  the  territorial 
integrity  of  Russia  and  to  refrain  from  interfering  in  Russian 
domestic  affairs.  Furthermore,  the  Japanese  Government  de- 
clares that  after  having  accomplished  the  above  task  it  will 
immediately  withdraw  its  troops  from  Russian  territory." 

It  would  appear  from  this  declaration  that  with  the  depart- 
ure of  the  Czecho-Slovaks  the  Japanese  forces  should  also  have 
gone.  However,  in  the  declaration  of  the  Japanese  Government, 
made  on  August  13,  1918,  only  a  few  days  after  the  solemn 
declaration  of  Japan  referred  to  above  was  issued,  additional  rea- 
sons were  given  to  justify  the  despatch  of  Japanese  troops ;  the 
Soviet  troops  headed,  according  to  information  which  reached 
Japan,  by  Austrians  and  Germans,  were  a  menace  to  Japan  and 
China.  In  the  declaration  of  March  31,  1920,  at  the  time  when 
the  Czecho-Slovak  evacuation  had  been  completed,  the  new 
reasons  given  in  the  declaration  of  August  13,  1918,  appeared  with 
much  greater  emphasis.  The  Czecho-Slovak  question  became  a 
matter  of  secondary  importance  and  the  alleged  menace  to  Korea 
and  Manchuria,  and  the  proximity  of  Siberia  to  Japan  were 
brought  out  to  the  foreground.  In  this  declaration  nothing  was 
said  definitely  about  the  withdrawal  of  the  Japanese  troops  after 
the  evacuation  of  the  Czecho-Slovaks.  It  was  stated  only  that 
the  Japanese  troops  would  be  withdrawn  from  Siberia  and  Trans- 
baikalia as  soon  as  possible  after  the  evacuation  of  the  Czecho- 
slovak forces  had  been  completed.  At  the  same  time  was  an- 
nounced the  occupation  of  the  Russian  part  of  Sakhalin,  on  the 
ground  that  there  were  no  legally  constituted  Russian  authori- 
ties with  whom  it  was  possible  to  negotiate  for  a  settlement 
of  the  Nikolayevsk  affair.  The  evacuation  of  the  Japanese  troops 
from  the  Khabarovsk  district  was  announced  on  September  18, 
1920.  In  the  declaration  signed  by  General  Oi,  the  Commander- 
in-Chief  of  the  Japanese  forces  in  Siberia,  it  was  said :  "I  want  to 
express  my  sincere  wish  for  an  early  union  of  the  Russian  Far 
East,  which  will  secure  peace  and  prosperity  to  the  people  and 
will  strengthen  the  friendly  neighborly  relations  between  the 
Russian  and  Japanese  peoples."  The  same  wish  has  been  re- 
peated in  all  the  statements  and  declarations  of  the  Imperial 
Japanese  Government  and  Japanese  Military   Command,  made 

54 


since  August,  1918.    The  Constituent  Assembly  wants  to  sum 
up  the  present  situation  in  the  following  words. 

Russian  Sakhalin  has  been  occupied.  The  Maritime  Province 
occupied  by  Japanese  troops  no  longer  resembles  Russian  terri- 
tory, for  the  Japanese  Command  is  conducting  itself  as  if  the 
Japanese  and  not  the  Russians  were  the  masters  of  that  territory. 
The  Maritime  Province,  under  the  control  of  the  Japanese,  is 
the  only  district  in  the  territory  of  the  Far  Eastern  Republic 
where  the  remnants  of  the  criminal  counter-revolutionary  bands 
of  Semenov  are  murdering  and  pillaging  the  peaceful  popula- 
tion. In  the  Maritime  Province  the  Government  of  the  Far 
Eastern  Republic  and  the  district  authorities  cannot  control 
the  affairs  of  the  Russian  people;  they  cannot  ship  food,  goods 
or  cars  outside  of  the  area  occupied  by  the  Japanese  troops.  The 
population  of  other  parts  of  the  Far  Eastern  Republic  is  therefore 
suffering  from  lack  of  food  and  clothing.  Trains  are  searched 
and  even  cars  in  which  representatives  of  the  Russian  authori- 
ties are  riding  are  detained  at  the  will  of  the  Japanese  Command. 

The  latest  notes  sent  by  the  Japanese  Consul  General  to  the 
authorities  of  the  Maritime  Province  with  regard  to  the  fisheries, 
offer  a  sad  comparison  between  the  actual  facts  and  the  Japan- 
ese declarations.  It  is  with  great  pain  that  the  Constituent  As- 
sembly thinks  of  the  events  of  April  4-5,  1920,  and  the  numer- 
ous innocent  victims  which  fell  as  the  result  of  the  Japanese 
intervention.  The  Constituent  Assembly  is  constrained  to  state 
that  the  presence  of  the  Japanese  troops  in  Siberia,  which  dis- 
tressed the  Russian  people,  was  responsible  for  those  events. 
The  representatives  of  the  people  of  the  Russian  Far  East  solemn- 
ly declare  that  any  aggressive  designs  against  Japan,  Korea 
and  Manchuria,  are  foreign  to  the  minds  of  the  Russian  people. 
The  people  of  the  Russian  Far  East  wish  to  establish  and  to 
strengthen  peaceful  relations  and  look  forward  to  the  resump- 
tion of  trade  relations  to  the  mutual  advantage  for  the  two 
countries.  The  Constituent  Assembly  states  with  great  regret 
that  even  the  people  of  those  parts  of  the  Russian  Far  East 
which  have  been  freed  from  foreign  intervention  cannot  go  on 
with  their  peaceful  labor  and  cannot  establish  permanent  order, 
because  the  presence  of  the  Japanese  troops  in  Russian  territory 
rouses  their  suspicion  and  makes  them  uncertain  of  the  future. 
Nothwithstanding  all  the  difficulties  and  obstacles,  the  Russian 
Far  East  has  been  united  to  the  Far  Eastern  Republic.  The  lat- 
ter has  been  declared  a  democratic  State,  the  foundations  of 
which  are  the  principles  of  civil  liberties,  the  universal  direct 
equal  and  secret  ballot  and  the  inviolability  of  private  property, 
both  of  Russian  and  foreign  citizens  residing  within  its  territory 
The  sovereignty  in  the  Republic  belongs  to  the  people,  who 
are  firmly  convinced  that  the  only  solid  basis  for  freedom  and 

55 


independence   is   peaceful    neighborly    relationship    with    other 
countries.  '  !j 

If  we  recall  that  the  Czecho-Slovak  forces  have  long  since 
evacuated  Siberia,  then  according  to  the  statements  made  by  the 
Japanese  Government,  there  is  no  reason  why  Japanese  troops 
should  remain  longer  in  the  territory  of  the  Far  Eastern  Repub 
lie.  The  time  has  come  for  the  Japanese  Government  to  prove 
that,  in  sending  troops  to  Russia  in  1918,  it  did  not  intend  to 
annex  Russian  territory  by  taking  advantage  of  the  temporary 
weakness  of  the  Russian  people  due  to  the  war,  the  subsequent 
disorganization  and  the  revolution.  A  great  historical  oppor- 
tunity has  come  to  the  Japanese  Government  to  determine  for 
many  years  or  even  hundreds  of  years  to  come,  the  mutual  re- 
lations between  the  two  great  nations  of  Russia  and  Japan 
Expressing  the  will  of  the  whole  of  the  people  of  the  Russian 
Far  East  to  free  the  country  of  foreign  intervention,  the  Con- 
stituent Assembly  emphatically  insists  upon  the  evacuation  of 
the  Japanese  Expeditionary  Forces  from  the  entire  territory  of 
the  Far  Eastern  Republic.  The  Constituent  Assembly  believes 
that  the  withdrawal  of  the  Japanese  troops  will  be  an  important 
factor  in  re-establishing  relations  between  the  Japanese  and 
Russian  people.  The  proximity  of  the  two  countries,  the  im- 
portance of  the  Russian  Far  East  to  Japanese  industry,  the  im- 
mense natural  resources  which  await  foreign  capital  for  their 
development,  all  are  a  pledge  of  the  future  close  and  peaceful 
relations,  which,  when  the  past  sad  memories  are  gone  and  the 
people  return  to  their  ordinary  occupations,  shall  exist  between 
Japan  and  the  Far  Eastern  Republic. 

The  Constituent  Assembly  expresses  the  hope  that  in  the 
near  future  the  Japanese  Government,  having  desisted  from 
intervention  in  Russian  affairs,  will  accord  recognition  to  the 
Far  Eastern  Republic  and  enter  into  formal  relations  with  it. 

For  the  Constituent  Assembly  of  the  Far  Eastern  Republic 

(Signed)     Shilov,   President. 
(Signed)     Suchovy,  Secretary. 
April,  1921. 

TO  THE  GOVERNMENT  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES  OF 

AMERICA 

In  the  official  declaration  of  the  American  Government, 
which  was  received  at  Vladivostok  on  August  5,  1918,  it  was 
stated  that  the  United  States  and  Japan  were  the  only  countries 
at  the  time  which  were  in  a  position  to  act  in  Siberia  with  suffi- 
cient forces,  even  to  achieve  such  a  modest  task  as  the  one  the 
Government  of  the  United  States  has  put  before  itself.  The 
Government  of  the  United  States  has  proposed,  therefore,  to  the 
Government  of  Japan,  that  both  countries  should  send  a  military 

56 


force  of  several  thousand  men  to  Vladivostok  to  co-operate  in 
the  occupation  of  the  city  with  the  view  of  guarding  the  rear 
for  the  Czecho-Slovak  troops  advancing  eastward.  The  Japan- 
ese Government  agreed  to  that  proposal.  The  Government  of 
the  United  States  declared  to  the  Russian  people  in  a  most  frank 
and  solemn  manner  that  it  did  not  aim  at  infringement  upon  the 
political  sovereignty  of  Russia,  that  it  did  not  intend  to  inter- 
fere with  her  domestic  affairs  even  within  those  limited  areas 
which  the  American  troops  might  be  forced  to  occupy,  and  that 
it  had  no  desire  to  encroach  upon  the  integrity  of  Russian  terri- 
tory at  that  time  or  in  the  future ;  that  the  American  Govern- 
ment aimed  exclusively  at  helping  the  Russian  people  in  the 
manner  most  acceptable  to  them  in  their  efforts  to  regain  con- 
trol of  their  own  affairs,  their  territory  and  their  destiny.  It 
was  understood  that  the  Japanese  Government  would  issue  a 
similar  statement. 

The  declaration  of  the  American  Government  established  the 
following  facts :  That  the  American  troops  landed  at  Vladivos- 
tok to  assist  the  Czecho-Slovaks ;  that  the  American  Govern- 
ment proposed  to  the  Japanese  Government  to  send  its  troops 
into  Russian  territory  and  that  the  former  is,  therefore,  respon- 
sible, for  the  further  stay  of  the  Japanese  troops  in  the  territory 
of  the  Far  Eastern  Republic ;  that  the  American  Government  has 
solemnly  guaranteed  its  non-interference  in  Russian  affairs  and 
the  inviolability  of  Russian  territory. 

Under  these  conditions  America  invited  Japan  to  co-operate 
in  assisting  the  Czecho-Slovaks.  At  about  the  same  time  (in 
August),  the  Japanese  Government,  in  its  official  declaration, 
repeated  the  above  statements.  Not  going  into  the  details  of  the 
sad  history  of  the  intervention,  it  is  enough  to  say  that  at  the 
end  of  1919  and  at  the  beginning  of  1920,  the  Allies  have  one 
after  another  withdrawn  their  troops  from  Siberia.  The  last 
transport  of  American  troops  left  Vladivostok  in  March,  1920, 
and  soon  after  that  the  remainder  of  the  Czecho-Slovak  forces 
left  our  country.  The  Japanese  troops  have  not  been  withdrawn ; 
Japan  has  put  forth  pretext  after  pretext  to  justify  their 
stay :  Japanese  interests  in  Eastern  Siberia,  the  possible  menace 
to  Korea  and  Manchuria  and  the  unsafe  conditions  menacing 
the  life  and  property  of  her  citizens.  Instead  of  the  evacuation 
of  the  Japanese  troops  we  witnessed  the  events  of  April  4  and 
5,  1920,  with  all  the  later  results,  and  in  July,  1920,  Japan  occu- 
pied the  Sakhalin  District.  The  Japanese  troops  were  withdrawn 
from  Transbaikalia  and  the  district  around  Khabarovsk,  while 
the  Maritime  Province  is  still  occupied  by  them.  The  Maritime 
Province  is  now  the  only  place  where  the  criminal  counter- 
revolutionary bands  of  Semenov  are  murdering  and  terrorizing 
the  population.  There,  as  in  Sakhalin,  the  people  do  not  feel 
themselves  any  longer  the  masters  of  their  own  land.    The  Jap- 

57 


anese  activity  in  the  Maritime  Province,  especially  their  inter- 
ference with  the  railway  traffic,  forced  the  members  of  the 
Inter-Allied  Technical  Board  to  adopt  a  resolution,  asking  their 
respective  Governments  whether  it  would  be  expedient  to  con- 
tinue their  work  in  view  of  the  interference  of  the  Japanese 
Command. 

The  American  Government  made  no  statement  to  the  Rus- 
sian people  of  the  Far  East  at  the  time  of  the  departure  of  the 
American  troops.  It  is  therefore  not  quite  clear  to  the  people  of 
the  Russian  Far  East  whether  the  American  Government  had 
achieved  the  purpose  for  which  it  sent  troops  to  Siberia.  Does 
the  American  Government  consider  that  the  Allied  intervention 
has  come  to  an  end?  In  the  declaration  of  March  14,  1919,  with 
regard  to  the  establishment  of  the  Inter-Allied  Technical  Board, 
it  was  stated  that  this  arrangement  for  the  Board  would  be- 
come invalid  as  soon  as  the  Allied  troops  should  be  recalled  from 
Siberia.  The  fact  of  the  Inter-Allied  Technical  Board  remaining 
in  Siberia  would  indicate  that  the  intervention  continues  with 
American  participation.  The  representatives  of  the  Russian  peo- 
ple in  the  Far  East  are  compelled  by  the  present  circumstances 
to  request  of  the  American  Government  an  explanation  of  the 
following: 

1.  Does  the  American  Government  adhere  to  its  declara- 
tion of  August  5,  1918? 

2.  If  it  does,  then  how  does  the  American  Government 
explain  the  continuance  of  the  intervention  after  the  evacuation 
of  the  Czecho-Slovak  troops? 

3.  If  it  does  not  adhere  to  that  declaration,  then  when  will 
the  American  Government  declare  with  the  same  solemnity 
that  the  intervention  has  ended? 

4.  When  will  the  American  Government,  which  invited 
the  Japanese  Government  to  a  military  co-operation  in  the  Rus- 
sian Far  East,  declare  a  definite  end  to  the  intervention  which 
began  in  1918,  by  that  invitation? 

In  spite  of  the  numerous  obstacles  which  have  been  put  and 
are  being  put  before  the  people  of  the  Russian  Far  East  in  their 
efforts  to  unite,  they  have  found  strength  enough  to  achieve  their 
aim.  By  the  will  of  the  entire  people  of  the  Russian  Far  East,  with- 
out distinction  of  class  and  nationality,  the  Constituent  Assem- 
bly has  now  been  convoked  on  the  principle  of  universal  suf- 
frage. The  Constituent  Assembly  has  confirmed  the  indepen- 
dence of  the  Russian  Far  East  and  the  formation  of  a  demo- 
cratic Far  Eastern  Republic. 

The  Russian  Socialist  Federated  Soviet  Republic  has  recog- 
nized the  independence  of  the  democratic  Far  Eastern  Republic 
and  now  the  Constituent  Assembly  which  represents  the  people 
and  expresses  their  will,  expects  the  United  States  of  America 
to  accord  recognition  to  the  Far  Eastern  Republic. 

58 


For  the  Constituent  Assembly  of  the  Far  Eastern  Republic. 

(Signed)     Shilov,  President. 
(Signed)      Suchovy,  Secretary. 
April,  1921. 


TO  THE  GOVERNMENT  OF  GREAT  BRITAIN 

In  connection  with  the  landing  of  American  troops  in  Rus- 
sian territory  the  American  Government  made  the  following 
solemn  declaration  to  the  Russian  people : 

"The  United  States  and  Japan  are  the  only  countries  which 
at  the  present  moment  are  in  a  position  to  act  in  Siberia  with 
sufficient  forces,  even  to  achieve  such  a  modest  task  as  the  one 
the  Government  of  the  United  States  has  put  before  itself.  The 
Government  of  the  United  States  has  proposed,  therefore,  to  the 
Government  of  Japan,  that  both  countries  should  send  a  military 
force  of  several  thousand  men  to  Vladivostok  to  co-operate  in 
the  occupation  of  the  city  and  in  the  protection  of  the  rear,  as 
much  as  possible,  of  the  Czecho-Slovak  troops  advancing  east- 
ward. The  Japanese  Government  agreed  to  that  proposal.  The 
Government  of  the  United  States  wishes  to  declare  to  the  Rus- 
sian people  in  a  most  frank  and  solemn  manner  that  it  does  not 
aim  at  infringement  upon  the  political  sovereignty  of  Russia, 
that  it  does  not  desire  to  interfere  with  her  domestic  affairs  even 
within  those  limited  areas  which  the  American  troops  might  be 
forced  to  occupy,  and  that  it  has  no  intention  to  encroach  upon 
the  integrity  of  Russian  territory  at  the  present  time  or  in  the 
future ;  that  the  American  Government  aims  exclusively  at  help- 
ing the  Russian  people  in  the  manner  most  acceptable  to  them 
in  their  efforts  to  regain  control  of  their  own  affairs,  their  terri- 
tory and  their  destiny.  It  is  understood  that  the  Japanese  Gov- 
ernment will  issue  a  similar  statement. 

The  Governments  of  Great  Britain,  France  and  Italy  have 
been  informed  of  the  aims  and  intentions  of  the  Government  of 
the  United  States  and  those  Governments  have  notified  the  State 
Department  that  they  have  agreed  to  it  on  principle." 

In  a  similar  declaration  the  Japanese  Government  stated : 
"The  Government  of  the  United  States,  recognizing  the 
seriousness  of  the  situation,  has  lately  addressed  the  Japanese 
Government,  asking  it  for  a  prompt  dispatch  of  troops  in  order 
to  relieve  the  position  of  the  Czecho-Slovak  forces.  In  order 
to  meet  the  wishes  of  the  American  Government  and  to  co-oper- 
ate with  the  Allies  in  this  expedition,  the  Japanese  Government 
has  decided  to  make  immediate  preparations  for  the  dispatch  of 
the  necessary  troops.  A  number  of  troops  will  be  immediately 
sent  to  Vladivostok.  Although  choosing  this  course  of  action, 
the  Japanese  Government,  nevertheless,  remains  firm  in  its  de- 
sire to  maintain  friendly  relations  with  Russia  and  her  people 

59 


and  confirms  its  declaration  of  the  policy  to  respect  the  terri- 
torial integrity  of  Russia  and  to  refrain  from  interfering  in 
Russian  domestic  affairs.  Furthermore,  the  Japanese  Govern- 
ment declares  that  after  having  accomplished  the  above  task  it 
will  immediately  withdraw  its  troops  from  Russian  territory." 

The  following  was  stated  in  a  similar  declaration  of  the 
British  Government,  signed  by  Balfour  and  addressed  "to  the 
people  of  Russia:" 

"Your  Allies  have  not  forgotten  you.  We  remembef  the 
service  rendered  by  your  heroic  army  in  the  first  years  of  the 
war,  and  we  come  to  you  as  friends  to  help  you,  to  save  you 
from  being  dismembered  and  crushed  by  Germany,  which  is  try- 
ing to  subdue  your  people  and  to  exploit  the  immense  riches  of 
your  country  for  her  own  benefit.  We  solemnly  declare,  however, 
that  helping  Russia  in  her  struggle  against  Germany  we  will  not 
retain  a  single  foot  of  Russian  territory." 

These  solemn  and  official  declarations  of  the  Governments 
of  the  United  States,  Japan  and  Great  Britain  quite  definitely  es- 
tablish the  following  facts  without  possibility  of  a  double  inter- 
pretation : 

1.  That  the  Allied  troops  landed  in  Russian  territory  to 
achieve  the  following  two  aims : 

a.  To  assist  the  Czecho-Slovaks  (the  aim  of  America  and 
Japan). 

b.  To  help  the  Russians  against  the  aggression  of  Ger- 
many (the  aim  of  Great  Britain,  France  and  Italy). 

2.  That  after  that  task  had  been  accomplished  the  Allied 
troops  would  be  withdrawn  from  Russian  territory. 

3.  That  the  sovereign  rights  of  the  Russian  people  over  their 
territory  were  not  to  be  infringed  upon. 

4.  That  in  case  any  of  the  Allies  violated  the  solemn  declara- 
tions made  by  them  the  responsibility  would  rest  with  all  the 
Allies. 

The  Constituent  Assembly  of  the  Far  Eastern  Democratic 
Republic  having  been  convened  in  order  to  work  out  the  final 
form  of  the  new  system  of  government  of  the  Russian  Far  East, 
based  on  democratic  principles  and  freedom,  in  peaceful  inter- 
course with  all  the  nations,  solemnly  addresses  the  Government 
and  through  it  the  people  of  Great  Britain,  calling  attention  to 
the  following  facts : 

1.  The  Czecho-Slovak  forces  have  left  Russian  territory  as 
far  back  as  March  and  April  of  last  year. 

2.  The  war  with  Germany  has  ended  long  ago. 

3.  All  the  Allied  troops  with  the  exception  of  the  Japanese 
have  been  withdrawn  from  Russian  territory. 

4.  The  Japanese  troops  have  not  only  not  been  withdrawn, 
but  with  the  departure  of  the  Allied  troops  the  Japanese  have 

60 


offered  pretext  after  pretext  to  justify  the  continuation  of  the 
intervention. 

5.  Entirely  ignoring  the  sovereignty  of  the  Russian  people 
over  their  own  territory,  the  Japanese  are  constantly  interfer- 
ing in  the  domestic  affairs  of  Russia,  preventing  the  resumption 
of  peaceful  economic  life  and  are  helping  to  incite  a  new  civil 
war  by  their  persistent  support  of  the  ruffians  and  criminals  of 
the  counter-revolutionary  groups. 

6.  The  Japanese  troops  have  occupied  the  Sakhalin  district 
and  have  forcibly  seized  almost  the  entire  fishing  trade  of  the 
Russian  Far  East. 

In  view  of  the  above  facts  the  Constituent  Assembly  is  con- 
strained to  request  of  the  British  Government  an  explanation 
of  the  following: 

1.  Does  the  British  Government  adhere  to  its  declaration  of 
August,  1918? 

2.  Does  the  British  Government  consider  that  the  task  which 
was  set  at  the  beginning  of  the  intervention  has  been  accom- 
plished? 

3.  If  it  does,  (a)  how  are  we  to  explain  the  fact  that  the 
British  Government  has  not  so  declared?  (b)  How  are  we  to 
explain  the  presence  of  Japanese  troops  in  Russian  territory? 
(c)  And  how  are  we  to  explain  the  silent  sanction  on  the  part 
of  the  British  Government  of  the  activity  of  the  Japanese  Gov- 
ernment in  the  territory  of  the  Russian  Far  East? 

4.  If  the  above  task  has  been  accomplished,  will  not  the 
British  Government  make  to  the  Russian  people  a  declaration 
to  that  effect  with  the  same  solemnity  as  that  with  which  it 
made  its  declaration  of  August,  1918? 

The  Chairman  of  the  Constituent  Assembly, 
(Signed)     Dmitry  Shilov, 
Secretary  of  the  Constituent  Assembly, 
(Signed)     Suchovy. 
Chita,  April  18,  1921. 


TO  THE  GOVERNMENT  OF  THE  REPUBLIC  OF 

FRANCE 

In  connection  with  the  landing  of  American  troops  in  Rus- 
sian territory  the  American  Government  made  the  following 
solemn  declaration  to  the  Russian  people : 

"The  United  States  and  Japan  are  the  only  countries  which 
at  the  present  moment  are  in  a  position  to  act  in  Siberia  with 
sufficient  forces,  even  to  achieve  such  a  modest  task  as  the  one 
the  Government  of  the  United  States  has  put  before  itself.  The 
Government  of  the  United  States  has  proposed,  therefore,  to  the 
Government  of  Japan  that  both  countries  should  send  a  military 

61 


force  of  several  thousand  men  to  Vladivostok  to  co-operate  in 
the  occupation  of  the  city  and  in  the  protection  of  the  rear,  as 
much  as  possible,  of  the  Czecho-Slovak  troops  advancing-  east- 
ward. The  Japanese  Government  agreed  to  that  proposal.  The 
Government  of  the  United  States  wishes  to  declare  to  the  Rus- 
sian people  in  a  most  frank  and  solemn  manner  that  it  does  not 
aim  at  infringement  upon  the  political  sovereignty  of  Russia, 
that  it  does  not  desire  to  interfere  with  her  domestic  affairs 
even  within  those  limited  areas  which  the  American  troops 
might  be  forced  to  occupy,  and  that  it  has  no  intention  to  en- 
croach upon  the  integrity  of  Russian  territory  at  the  present 
time  or  in  the  future ;  that  the  American  Government  aims  ex- 
clusively at  helping  the  Russian  people  in  the  manner  most  ac- 
ceptable to  them  in  their  efforts  to  regain  control  of  their  own 
affairs,  their  territory  and  their  destiny.  It  is  understood  that  the 
Japanese  Government  will  issue  a  similar  statement. 

"The  Governments  of  Great  Britain,  France  and  Italy  have 
been  informed  of  the  aims  and  intentions  of  the  Government  of 
the  United  States  and  those  Governments  have  notified  the 
State  Department  that  they  have  agreed  to  it  on  principle." 

In  a  similar  declaration  the  Japanese  Government  stated: 

"The  Government  of  the  United  States,  recognizing  the 
seriousness  of  the  situation,  has  lately  addressed  the  Japanese 
Government,  asking  it  for  a  prompt  dispatch  of  troops  in  order 
to  relieve  the  position  of  the  Czecho-Slovak  forces.  In  order 
to  meet  the  wishes  of  the  American  Government  and  to  co-oper- 
ate with  the  Allies  in  this  expedition,  the  Japanese  Government 
has  decided  to  make  immediate  preparations  for  the  dispatch  of 
the  necessary  troops.  A  number  of  troops  will  be  immediately 
sent  to  Vladivostok.  Although  choosing  this  course  of  action, 
the  Japanese  Government,  nevertheless,  remains  firm  in  its  de- 
sire to  maintain  friendly  relations  with  Russia  and  her  people 
and  confirms  its  declaration  of  the  policy  to  respect  the  terri- 
torial integrity  of  Russia  and  to  refrain  from  interfering  in 
Russian  domestic  affairs.  Furthermore,  the  Japanese  Govern- 
ment declares  that  after  having  accomplished  the  above  task  it 
will  immediately  withdraw  its  troops  from  Russian  territory." 

These  statements  were  repeated  in  the  declarations  made 
by  Great  Britain,  France  and  Italy. 

These  solemn  and  official  declarations  of  the  Allies  quite 
definitely  establish  the  following  facts  without  any  possibility 
of  a  double  interpretation: 

1.     That    the    Allied    troops    landed    in    Russian    territory    to 
achieve  the  following  two  aims : 

a.  To  assist  the  Czecho-Slovaks  (the  aim  of  America  and 
Japan). 

b.  To  help  the  Russians  against  the  aggression  of  Germany 
(the  aim  of  Great  Britain,  France  and  Italy). 

62 


2.  That  after  that  task  had  been  accomplished  the  Allied 
troops  would  be  withdrawn  from  Russian  territory. 

3.  That  the  sovereign  rights  of  the  Russian  people  over  their 
territory  were  not  to  be  infringed  upon. 

4.  That  in  case  any  of  the  Allies  violated  the  solemn  declara- 
tions made  by  them  the  responsibility  would  rest  with  all  the 
Allies. 

The  Constituent  Assembly  of  the  Far  Eastern  Democratic 
Republic  having  been  assembled  in  order  to  work  out  the  final 
form  of  the  new  system  of  government  of  the  Russian  Far  East, 
based  on  democratic  principles  and  freedom,  in  peaceful  inter- 
course with  all  the  nations,  solemnly  addresses  the  Government 
and  through  it  the  people  of  France,  calling  attention  to  the 
following  facts : 

1.  The  Czecho-Slovak  forces  have  left  the  Russian  territory 
as  far  back  as  March  and  April  of  last  year. 

2.  The  war  with  Germany  has  ended  long  ago. 

3.  All  the  Allied  troops  with  the  exception  of  the  Japanese 
have  been  withdrawn  from  Russian  territory. 

4.  The  Japanese  troops  have  not  only  not  been  withdrawn, 
but  with  the  departure  of  the  Allied  troops  the  Japanese  have 
offered  pretext  after  pretext  to  justify  the  continuation  of  the 
intervention. 

5.  Entirely  ignoring  the  sovereignty  of  the  Russian  people 
over  their  own  territory,  the  Japanese  are  constantly  interfer- 
ing in  the  domestic  affairs  of  Russia,  preventing  the  resumption 
of  a  peaceful  life  and  are  helping  to  incite  a  new  civil  war  by 
their  persistent  support  of  the  ruffians  and  criminals  of  the 
counter-revolutionary  groups. 

6.  The  Japanese  troops  have  occupied  the  Sakhalin  district 
and  have  forcibly  seized  almost  the  entire  fishing  trade  of  the 
Russian  Far  East. 

In  view  of  the  above  facts  the  Constituent  Assembly  is  con- 
strained to  request  of  the  French  Government  an  explanation 
of  the  following: 

1.  Does  the  French  Government  adhere  to  its  declaration  of 
August,  1918? 

2.  Does  the  French  Government  consider  that  the  task  which 
was  set  at  the  beginning  of  the  intervention  has  been  accom- 
plished? 

3.  If  it  does  (a)  how  are  we  to  explain  the  fact  that  the 
French  Government  has  not  so  declared?  (b)  How  are  we  to 
explain  the  presence  of  Japanese  troops  on  Russian  territory? 
(c)  How  are  we  to  explain  the  silent  sanction  on  the  part  of 
the  French  Government  of  the  activity  of  the  Japanese  Govern- 
ment in  the  territory  of  the  Russian  Far  East? 

4.  If  the  above   task   has  been   accomplished,   will  not  the 

63 


French  Government  make  to  the  Russian  people  a  declaration  to 
that  effect  with  the  same  solemnity  as  that  with  which  it  made 
its  declaration  of  August,  1918? 

The  Chairman  of  the  Constituent  Assembly, 

(Signed)     Shilov, 

Secretary  of  the  Constituent  Assembly. 
(Signed)     Suchovy, 
April  18,  1921,  Chita. 


DECLARATION  BY  COUNCIL  OF  MINISTERS. 

In  a  period  of  extreme  economic  disorganization,  when, 
in  spite  of  the  conclusion  of  civil  war,  foreign  intervention  in 
its  flagrant  occupation  of  very  important  and  valuable  portions 
of  the  Republic,  still  continued,  the  Far  Eastern  Government 
elected  by  the  Constituent  Assembly,  formed  the  Council  of 
Ministers,  entrusting  it  with  the  task  of  directing  and  managing 
the  affairs  of  the  Republic. 

Being  compelled  under  the  pressure  of  historical  necessity 
to  establish  an  independent  State,  the  working  people  of  the 
Russian  Far  East,  in  their  long,  stubborn  and  hard  resistance 
against  reaction  and  intervention,  and  amid  the  flames  of  civil 
war,  conceived  a  strong  determination  to  achieve  unity  and 
defend  their  right  and  preserve  their  country.  The  unification 
of  the  Far  East  ended  with  the  election  of  the  Constituent  As- 
sembly, which  has  adopted  the  Constitution  of  the  Republic  and 
has  formulated  the  general  state  policy  of  the  country. 

Now  the  Council  of  Ministers  is  faced  with  the  task  of  put- 
ting the  Constitution  into  practice,  of  reorganizing  the  state 
economy,  of  realizing  the  principles  of  civil  and  political  freedom 
and  democracy,  and  of  bringing  about  the  final  and  real  union 
of  the  provinces  of  the  Far  East  in  a  single  state  organization, 
thereby  ending  civil  war,  intervention,  and  economic  disorgani- 
zation of  different  parts  of  the  Republic. 

For  the  tasks  enumerated  above  the  majority  of  the  popula 
tion,  and  all  the  workers  are  responsible,  and  their  accomplish- 
ment is  possible  only  through  the  co-operation  and  exertion  oi 
all  groups  and  parties  of  the  people.  The  Government  of  the 
Republic  has  therefore  invited  all  political  parties  and  groups 
that  are  willing  to  devote  their  energy  and  knowledge  to  the  re- 
establishment  of  the  political  and  economic  life  of  the  country. 
to  participate  in  the  important  work  of  the  Council  of  Ministers. 

Having  defined  the  task  of  state  reconstruction  and  deter- 
mined upon  a  general  plan  for  its  attainment,  the  majority  of 
the  working  people  has  been  guided  by  the  interests  of  the 
nation  as  a  whole,  and  not  of  single  groups,  thus  realizing  the 

64 


general  national  task  which  is  before  the  Republic.  Having 
been  called  upon  to  carry  into  effect  the  will  of  the  majority  of 
the  people,  the  Council  of  Ministers,  bearing  in  mind  the  general 
interests  of  the  working  people  of  the  Republic,  will  at  the  same 
time  fulfill  the  aspirations  of  the  nation  as  a  whole.  The  Council 
of  Ministers,  has,  therefore,  the  right  not  only  of  demanding 
obedience  in  accordance  with  the  Constitution,  but  has  also  the 
right  of  expecting  the  friendly  support  of  all  classes  regardless 
of  party  affiliation. 

The  Council  of  Ministers  is  entirely  responsible  to  the  peo- 
ple, whose  representative  body  is  the  National  Assembly  of  the 
Republic.  Being  in  close  connection  with  the  people  of  the 
Republic,  relying  upon  the  confidence  of  the  National  Assembly 
and  upon  the  active  support  of  the  masses,  the  Council  of  Minis- 
ters will  not  abandon  the  course  of  state  reconstruction  it  has 
adopted,  whatever  obstacle  or  opposition  it  may  meet  from  forces 
hostile  to  the  people. 

Hoping  to  make  in  the  future  a  detailed  statement  of  the 
plan  of  its  activities  in  the  different  departments  of  government 
administration  and  national  economy,  the  Council  of  Ministers 
at  the  present  moment  considers  it  necessary  to  discuss  only 
such  general  questions  on  its  program  as  are  of  immediate  and 
paramount  importance  and  of  special  interest. 

The  reconstruction  of  the  Republic  and  the  restoration  of 
normal  life  in  it  will  be  possible  only  when  the  separate  provinces 
are  closely  connected  with  the  Central  Government,  under  abso- 
lute submission  to  the  economic-administrative  authorities  of  the 
Government  of  the  Republic  and  when  activities  are  conducted 
in  full  accord  with  the  general  interests  of  the  country. 

Granting  an  unlimited  field  of  initiative  and  independent 
activity  to  the  local  autonomous  bodies,  the  Council  of  Ministers, 
nevertheless,  makes  it  its  first  duty  to  eliminate  any  tendency 
toward  separation  in  any  department  of  provincial  life  which 
is  of  national  importance,  and  to  bring  about  a  full  agreement 
between  the  local  administrative  bodies  and  the  general  laws 
of  the  Republic  and  to  bring  local  administration  into  consonance 
with  the  instructions  and  general  policy  of  the  Central  Govern- 
ment. 

With  that  end  in  view  and  guided  by  the  instructions  of  the 
Government,  the  Council  of  Ministers  will  see  that  a  uniform 
system  of  local  government  is  established  throughout  the  terri- 
tory of  the  Republic  in  accordance  with  the  Constitution. 

It  is  the  opinion  of  the  Council  of  Ministers  that  the  work 
of  establishing  union  between  the  Central  Government  and  the 
local  administrative  bodies,  as  well  as  the  introduction  of  law  and 
democratic  order  will  be  greatly  facilitated  by  the  institution  of 
the  provincial  Emissaries  provided  for  in  the  Constitution. 

65 


In  the  interest  of  democracy  and  order  in  the  Republic, 
the  Council  of  Ministers  considers  it  its  task  to  organize  a  normal 
judicial  system,  taking  into  consideration  that  the  judicial  bodies 
have  not  only  to  maintain  law,  but  to  be  the  exponents  of  the  new 
conception  of  order  for  the  masses  which  should  reflect  the  newly 
established  correlation  of  social  forces. 

Having  occupied  their  proper  place  in  the  general  scheme 
of  government  institutions,  the  judicial  bodies  should  be  the 
main  guarantee  to  the  citizens  of  unrestricted  enjoyment  of  their 
civil  and  political  rights. 

Taking  into  consideration  that  under  the  present  circum- 
stances we  must  count  not  only  with  the  criminals,  who  violate 
the  rights  of  the  citizens,  but  also  with  the  counter-revolutionary 
elements,  which  direct  their  activity  against  the  political  liberty 
of  the  citizens  and  the  democratic  order,  the  Council  of  Minis- 
ters, in  order  to  protect  the  civil  liberties  of  the  citizens  in  strict 
accordance  with  the  Constitution  of  the  Republic,  will  reorganize 
the  militia  and  stabilize  political  security. 

However,  the  best  protectors  and  preservers  of  civil  and  po- 
litical freedom  are  the  conscious  people  themselves, „$nd  there- 
fore, all  the  combined  measures  here  mentioned  will  not  suf- 
ficiently guarantee  the  maintenance  of  democratic  order  if  the 
standard  of  culture  of  the  people  is  not  raised.  The  Council  of 
Ministers,  therefore,  having  adopted  concrete  measures  for  the 
general  education  of  the  people  of  the  Republic,  has  set  for  itself 
the  task  of  the  early  solution  of  the  problems,  as  defined  by  the 
Constituent  Assembly:  To  provide  all  the  citizens  of  the  Re- 
public, and  first  of  all  the  working  people,  with  a  general  free 
education,  compulsory  and  universal  for  all  children  of  school 
age,  and  to  establish  a  uniform  system  of  education  in  all  the 
schools  of  the  Republic. 

Due  attention  will  be  paid  to  the  health  of  the  people,  and 
the  Government  undertakes  to  provide  the  people  with  free 
medical  and  veterinary  assistance. 

But  the  main  task  before  the  Council  of  Ministers,  upon  the 
performance  of  which  depends  the  future  of  our  young  Republic, 
is  the  re-establishment  and  organization  of  a  sound  financial  and 
industrial  system.  To  augment  the  creative  forces  of  industry 
and  agriculture,  to  establish  normal  trade,  and  to  facilitate  trans- 
portation, the  present  conditions  of  the  Republic  demand  the 
free  employment  of  capital,  not  only  Russian,  co-operative  01 
private,  but  also  foreign. 

Touching  upon  the  different  branches  of  national  econ- 
omy, the  Council  of  Ministers,  acting  in  strict  accordance  with 
the  articles  of  the  Constitution,  will  be  guided  by  the  following 
consideration : 

In  the  domain  of  industry: 

66 


1.  In  full  accordance  with  the  will  of  the  Constituent  As- 
sembly, and  in  the  interest  of  the  economic  development  of  the 
country,  the  freedom  of  private  initiative  is  established  in  all 
departments  of  industry,  for  both  Russian  and  foreign  capital, 
restricted  only  by  the  rights  of  ownership  of  the  resources  of 
the  land,  as  prescribed  in  the  Constitution. 

2.  Aiming  at  the  co-operation  of  the  large  masses  of  the 
workers  in  the  establishment  of  national  industry,  the  Council 
of  Ministers  will  assist  in  every  possible  way  the  existing  co- 
operative and  public  enterprises  and  will  encourage  the  estab- 
lishment of  new  enterprises,  by  participating  in  them  and  by 
granting  them  certain  privileges. 

3.  The  Council  of  Ministers  will  exert  every  effort  to  im- 
prove and  extend  the  government  industrial  enterprises,  such 
improvement  and  extension  being  the  main  problem  of  the 
Ministry  of  Industry. 

The  majority  of  the  peasant  population  are  now  in  a  very 
difficult  position,  owing  to  the  fact  that  their  homes  and  property 
have  in  many  places  been  plundered,  set  on  fire  or  entirely  de- 
stroyed. In  order  to  re-establish  rural  economy  to  a  certain 
degree,  great  sums  of  money  and  the  utmost  exertions  of  the 
working  people  are  required.  The  Council  of  Ministers  will 
adopt  all  measures  to  increase  the  productivity  of  the  land,  by 
supplying  the  population  with  agricultural  machinery  and  seed- 
grain  ;  and  by  organizing  agronomical  aid ;  it  will  also  develop 
rural  industries  by  stimulating  the  widest  participation  on  the 
part  of  co-operative,  rural  and  public  organizations. 

In  order  to  supply  the  people  with  the  necessary  provisions 
and  commodities,  the  Council  of  Ministers  will  act  in  close  asso- 
ciation with  co-operative  organizations.  But  in  order  to  come 
to  a  satisfactory  solution  of  the  problem,  under  the  present  dis- 
organized state  of  the  economic  life  of  the  country,  the  partici- 
pation of  all  the  sound  forces  of  the  Republic  is  necessary. 
The  Council  of  Ministers  guarantees  full  freedom  for  the  partici- 
pation of  private  capital,  and  will  endeavor  to  create  such  con- 
ditions in  its  relations  with  foreign  powers,  as  to  afford  foreign 
capital  an  opportunity  to  participate  largely  in  the  industrial 
and  commercial  life  of  the  country. 

At  the  same  time,  taking  into  consideration  the  disorganized 
state  of  the  economic  life  of  the  country  and  the  prevalence 
of  speculative  capital,  the  Council  of  Ministers  considers  it  neces- 
sary to  adopt  measures  regulating  export  and  import,  in  order  to 
protect  the  interests  of  the  state  and  to  concentrate  in  the  hands 
of  the  Government  all  raw  materials  which  are  of  importance  to 
the  country,  and  also  to  regulate  the  domestic  trade,  while  by  no 
means  restricting  the  initiative  of  private  or  co-operative  capital. 

Being  anxious  to  create  favorable  conditions  for  normal 
trade  in  the  country,  the  Council  of  Ministers  considers  it  nec- 

67 


essary  to  annul  all  currency  which  is  not  guaranteed  and  to 
adopt  a  stable  monetary  unit. 

At  the  same  time,  taking  into  consideration  the  limited  re- 
sources of  the  Republic,  the  Council  of  Ministers  considers  it 
of  great  importance  to  adopt  the  following  measures : 

(a)  To  limit  to  a  minimum  the  expenditures  of  the  Republic 
and  to  reduce  the  staff  of  government  institutions  and  enter- 
prises. 

(b)  To  increase  the  income  of  the  State  by  revising  the 
existing  taxes,  by  introducing  new  taxes,  duties  and  excise,  and 
also  revising  trade  monopolies  on  articles  of  universal  consump- 
tion, this  being  within  the  jurisdiction  of  the  Ministry  of  Finance. 

The  Council  of  Ministers  considers  it  necessary  to  re-estab- 
lish the  transport  system  of  the  Republic,  adapting  it  to  the  great 
needs  of  the  country.  In  the  political  and  strategic  interests  of 
the  State,  the  rail  and  water  ways,  as  well  as  the  mines,  which 
directly  and  chiefly  support  the  rail  and  water  transport  service 
with  coal,  shall  be  under  the  control  of  the  Government. 

In  organizing  the  protection  of  labor,  the  Council  of  Minis- 
ters has  undertaken  the  task  of  making  effective  the  fundamental 
laws  pertaining  to  labor,  adopted  by  the  Constituent  Assembly 
and  will  endeavor  first  of  all : 

(a)  In  order  to  guarantee  to  the  labor  organizations  a  real 
influence  upon  the  life  of  the  State,  to  invite  the  trade  unions 
to  participate  in  the  active  reconstruction  of  the  economic  life 
of  the  Republic,  by  co-operation  in  the  administration  of  govern- 
ment enterprises  and  by  their  assistance  in  regulating  the  wages 
of  the  workers. 

(b)  In  order  to  protect  the  interests  of  labor,  the  Govern- 
ment will  formulate  legislation  granting  to  the  trade  unions  the 
right  to  dispose  of  supplies  and  articles  of  primary  and  second- 
ary importance,  intended  for  the  workers,  as  a  wage  in  kind, 
increasing  the  supply  to  the  normal  ratio  of  consumption. 

(c)  To  organize  workers'  associations  for  the  protection  of 
labor,  and  first  of  all,  for  the  protection  of  child  labor,  forbidding 
the  employment  of  children  in  industries  detrimental  to  the 
health  of  minors,  establishing  at  the  same  time  educational  insti- 
tutions. 

(d)  To  establish  insurance  organizations  with  the  full  right 
of  co-operation  therein  of  the  insured,  to  provide,  first  of  all, 
against  disability,  accident  or  childbirth. 

In  its  foreign  policy  the  Council  of  Ministers,  acting  under 
the  instructions  of  the  Government  of  the  Republic  and  in  co- 
operation with  it,  will  endeavor  to  establish  the  position  of  our 
young  Republic,  as  a  fully  recognized  member  of  the  comity 
of  nations.  Having  settled  its  relations  with  Soviet  Russia, 
every  effort  will  be  exerted  to  establish  relations  with  foreign 

68 


countries,  first  of  all  with  China  and  Japan,  on  the  basis  of 
peace,  mutual  respect  for  the  sovereign  right  of  each  country, 
non-interference  in  their  domestic  affairs,  and  a  friendly  attitude 
to  economic  interests  on  the  principle  of  reciprocity,  and  strong- 
ly insisting  upon  the  evacuation  of  foreign  troops  from  the 
territory  of  the  Republic,  and  upon  abstention  from  further  in- 
terference in  the  domestic  affairs  of  the  Republic  by  foreign 
powers. 

To  secure  order  in  the  Republic,  to  protect  the  country  from 
any  foreign  encroachment,  and  to  defend  the  citizens  from  the 
attacks  of  counter-revolutionary  groups,  which  are  largely  con- 
centrated beyond  the  borders  of  the  Republic,  the  Council  of 
Ministers,  acting  under  the  instructions  of  the  Government,  will 
adopt  measures  necessary  for  the  re-organization  of  the  army. 

The  Council  of  Ministers  believes  that  the  accomplishment 
in  part  at  least  of  the  aforementioned  tasks,  with  the  friendly 
co-operation  of  the  people  of  the  Republic  will  further  the  estab- 
lishment of  normal  conditions,  under  which  the  carrying  out  of 
the  Constitution,  established  by  the  Constituent  Assembly,  and 
the  election  of  a  new  National  Assembly,  will  be  made  possible. 

The  President  of  the  Council  of  Ministers :     Nikiforov. 

Minister  of  Justice:     Binasik. 

Minister  of  Domestic  Affairs:     Matveyev. 

Minister  of  War:     Burov. 

Ministed  of  Commerce :     Grossman. 

Minister  of  Supplies  :     Poletayev. 

Minister  of  Education  :    Shreiber. 

Minister  of  Labor  and  Social  Welfare:    Shulikov. 

Minister  of  Agriculture:     Bessonov. 

Minister  of  Industry.    Anisimov. 

Minister  of  Communication  :     Shatov. 
May,  1921. 


69 


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